EGOIC LOTUS WEBINARS, VIDEO COMMENTARY – 41, Michael Robbins

Abstract

Egoic Lotus Webinar Commentaries 41: Part 2 of Synthesis for Petal 5. This webinar is about 4 hours long. Program 41, discusses the contributions of many energy-force influences which are active in producing the Petal 5 experience which is a pivotal experience resulting in the first “Reversal of the Wheel” and signals the time when the Solar Angel becomes a “downward gazing soul” which supervises the development of its projection—the soul-in-incarnation. Though man must labor at organizing and vitalizing the petals, from the fifth petal onward the Solar Angel is involved in promoting their unfolding. In the study of the next four petals our focus will be on the Path of Probation, the second initiation and the third initiations. Work is being done in P6 while P5 is unfolding. The development of P6 ranges all the way from the Path of Probation to the second initiation.

Egoic Lotus Webinar Commentaries 41 659 MB .wmv fileVideo of Egoic Lotus Webinar Commentaries 41 by Michael D. Robbins.

Egoic Lotus Webinar Commentaries 41 230 MB .mp3 fileAudio of Egoic Lotus Webinar Commentaries 41 by Michael D. Robbins.

Transcript

Good morning everyone, we are continuing now with our synthesis for petal five. We've done about half of it and this is program 41. Here's petal five with its double rose color and a strong emphasis upon the pivotal point where the solar angel begins to take over and the man can become gradually advanced man and then the aspirant.

(I have a little more natural light this morning the sun is not shining so brightly through these orange curtains so I just thought to pull the curtains aside and look like a human being perhaps instead of something from the Planet orange.)

Let's take a look now we're at the point where we're discussing the rays which are most implicated in this petal. I've mentioned two, four, six, and five, but let's take a look. There are others that should be mentioned as well. Summation of the third aspect of divinity sums when the star flashes forth at the first degree. The process of integration, ray seven bringing the structure of integration together. Anyway we'll see as we go.

Ray two, definitely it's a love-love petal, the turning of the attention of the inner self to the love of the real.

I think I should read it again because it's so good and one tends to forget.

2. The Petal of Love for the astral plane; unfoldment is brought about through the process of gradually transmuting the love of the subjective nature or of the Self within. This has a dual effect and works through on to the physical plane in many lives of turmoil, of endeavor and of failure as a man strives to turn his attention to the love of the Real. TCF 540

The Petal of Love for the astral plane; unfoldment is brought about through the process of gradually transmuting the love of the subjective nature or of the Self within. because it is attached to things which are not of the self. This has a dual effect and works through on to the physical plane in many lives of turmoil, of endeavor and of failure as a man strives (there is the sixth ray, isn’t it?) to turn his attention to the love of the Real.

Up to this time love has not been the love the real. There's a little bit of this in petal four with this conscious balancing of the pairs of opposites, but not with such intensity, not such a striving for the real, to be a higher aspect of oneself or to be in close rapport with it.

So turning attention. Turning the attention of what? As a man strives to turn his attention simply that, to the love of the real. And this is interesting in terms of ray two. Ray two seeks absolute truth as we learn on page 203 of Esoteric Psychology I, with the seven rays are summarized.

Venus is like a mirror and we turn our gaze inward. If we are advanced enough sometimes we just look in the mirror and say, ‘Well how do I look today?’, and that's simply the form, but we're talking about the inner being looking in the mirror and discovering that Being.

The solar angels carry lots of ray two, they are essentially buddhic beings, they are like buddhi, and they use manas for their vehicle. I think it's pretty obvious that the importance of the fourth ray and it's in a way the pivot point from the third ray method of engagement, that of the second ray. Because that's always happening on our planet and solar system and in the development of the human being himself, the turning from the third ray to the second.

Ray four? There is struggling, turmoil, struggling, turmoil, ups and downs, a turning and a changing of loyalties; now the personality, now the soul, so there's quite a bit of conflict in the—because the tendency is to turn one's attention to the love of the unreal and this has to be counteracted.

So there's a struggle between two suns in a way, or a struggle between two aspects of Leo, the I Am, and the I Am That, I was here, yeah I see I put that right here, I Am is fighting I Am That. Maybe even in our own life that is happening even though we may assume that we have moved along the path, but we're not yet at the point of I am That I am. Or I Am That I Am. So we may be unconscious of the nature of that with which we are struggling because we are still identified as a personality, but increasingly, with occult study we learn what actually is happening.

Ray six here, the striving to turn once attention to the love of the real. There will be here Scorpio and its ruler Mars and the integrated personality can be considered to be expressed under Mars altogether. Also a new devotion to the Higher Self, devotion, Mars which is realized as a possible attainment and perseverance Scorpio but we have to remember that the integrated personality. So the integrated personality is ruled by Mars, every one of the personality elementals and that rebellious unit called the personality until it acquiesces to the Venusian ray.

0:08:40 What about ray five? Lots of light here the light of the soul coming in the double Venus and also corresponding with this. The double rose, so brilliance of mind is found here, genius of the fifth ray lord, the fifth ray lord is the brightest of all, ingenious is here with the two petals unfolded. It is pretty well saying that a genius has to be a first degree initiate. He is saying that.

We're choosing the upward pentagram or the downward pentagram of selfishness here, that's ray five the pentagram up the pentagram down. We face two stars, one point up and the other down, the devil of pride can be here because we confront many things on the mental plane here.

Leo is actually quite a mental sign having to do with the fifth ray and the lower mind, so there's discrimination between two paths and the duality is a very strongly pronounced. Some people never get out of the – well it takes others—let’s say that that takes a long time for some people to pass through and be on the stage of the strong personality and be a personality which commands all the attention with which the individual is identified.

What is the Love of the Real? That's interesting. The real gives you humility and so does Libra here, at a pivot point, and so there's the fifth ray, seeing things as they are as they are in fifth ray and light gives us humility and a just sense of right proportion as it is that.

Other rays here? Are the third, seventh, and first. Ray three certainly for creativity and mental excellence also for the height of personality expression the throat center is going to be strong here because of the creativity. Throat center strong source of creativity and we have human group six or soul group however we want to look at it. They are souls, they are humans, and we talked about that the people who are first creative and then become the aspirants.

So ray three, yes, and at the first initiation there is the kind of climaxing occurring for the rays of Brahma at the first initiation, which are three through seven.

What about ray seven? Transmutation and alchemy whereby the love nature is changed indeed, Uranus related very much to Leo, and Uranus related to the pivot, the re- of Uranus, re-form and re-pent, Uranus is turning the other way, the pivot. We begin to leave physicality and we begin to focus more in the etheric reality which Uranus rules, and the ethers are solar and we could say that physical matter is very lunar. That doesn't mean that we cannot connect the etheric with the moon, those Devas do seem to carry the moon on their forehead, violet devas.

Transmutation from something lunar to something solar, that's what's going on, the love of the solar emerges from the love of the lunar. The love of the lunar of course is the love of form, which is the unreal and if we love form, forgetting its connection with the formless, then we love unreality.

The moon? The moon represented by the egotistical sun, that’s the ahamkaric sun, which is at war with the sun representing the soul and the heart, So we're really here transmitting the moon into the sun and Uranus and the seventh ray are needed for this transmutation – gradually transfer muting the love of the subjective nature of the self within. Gradually transmuting, changing the quality and condition of matter.

What about the sun? The sun when it is ego is the acme of the lunar life. That's an interesting idea, the integrated personality in and of itself without integrating with the energy system of the soul is the acme of the lunar life. This means we might call it solarity in the lower sense, the sun when it is the higher self is solar in the spiritual sense. I hope we have a clear, just because this is the sun doesn't mean that it's necessary spiritual, the sun is veiling a non-sacred secondary planet.

What about ray one? Well, for being number one, centralization of the life, a powerful integrated personality. It’s the Uranian vibration in another sense, the dominant and dominating personality, of

course it depends on the ray, but one can have a dominant personality of any ray meaning that it commands the majority of attention and one somehow is identified with it. It’s a very essential petal of reorientation, a real pivotal petal and it really starts man into his approach to the fifth kingdom of nature. Once you pass this petal. You have a good chance at really living the spiritual life, you still might deflect, it's possible still to deflect even after the second tier is completely open and lots of work is done even to the eighth petal.

Somehow some people carry the selfishness here developed with them. We can say selfishness developed in the first part of the petal is somehow carried along and it is not transmuted. How then to account for people who might be initiates of even the second degree (or close) and have lived lives of selfishness? They are really advanced human beings and was it really possible that a man like Hitler was an initiate? Well the legends of Klingsor in parts of all with whom some say he was identified, a fallen Knight of the Grail seeking to bring everybody else down to.

0:17:30 Color of the petals and their meaning: rose, orange, rose, blue.

Rose is the astral plane, it's the emotional expressiveness and the orientation toward something higher there's always some sort of upward direction in rose, devotion to the newly sensed soul.

Of course, we could call it devotion to oneself, to one's higher self in the higher sense, and also devotion to one’s self in the lower sense and hence selfishness. There are people quite – this petal runs the risk – we have the risk here of narcissism, of looking at our self in the mirror, the mirror of Venus, then and falling in love with our own image. rose is moving us towards selflessness, it's the rising of the solar plexus to the heart center.

If we remember in the color description of evolving man, there's a rosy cross athwart an oval of blue at the end of that long isolative tunnel which represents the path. It’s amazing how the images somehow capture the experiences on the path.

orange? Leo is orange and this is the Leo petal and we're talking about prana from the sun and the orange is identified with prana and vitality, a new vitalization of the integrated personality – which now has more power – when the conflicts cease there is more power.

I would say that you can petal four there is more conflict within the personality. In petal five, ideally more conflict between the higher self and the lower self. Then the personality is all quite put together I mean conflict is with the lower self.

Orange, the color of pride in the first part of the petal. There has to be self respect, here this is where we I think gain a self respecting image, especially in the beginning, as long as we don't take it too far.

I'm kind of wondering about the Sun King, Louis the Fourteen, was and he thought a great deal of himself he had some of this Leo energy and as you can see from his posing actually, had a lot of Scorpio and Virgo, but Venus and the moon were in Leo and I guess he spent a fair amount of time in front of the mirror I would suppose, and he had this undue self affirmation and self respect and that that kind of ahamkara really ties in with what DK calls the period of evil which occurred during the time of the French Kings, with of course Leo ruling the personality of France, so therefore emphasizing that aspect as well as the third ray power, the personality.

Orange is the basic color of the solar angel, and this is the beginning in many respects, depends on how symbolic we want to look at it, the path to the sun. Perhaps the orange here is more golden. There are as if your colors which are not exactly what we think them normally to be. But orange rules the lower mental plane and here on the lower mental plane we form the personality around the mental unit. …orange is a kind of synthesizer, just as the lower mind and the sixth sense are synthesisers.

Orange moving more towards golden is the prototype of the master-to-be. We get our first real understanding of our solar the nature. We can be the imperious sign or we can be the warm and promotive loving. Two kinds of suns here: one is imperious and it's a great limitation; the other is loving, vitalizing, and bringing forth the sun for all.

What a pivot this is for people and when they're really struggling between selfishness and unselfishness if they've already have that life in the convent or the monastery so to speak, they should be generally beyond this, having done a lot of developmental work in the sixth petal of self correction. I guess I could call it that, right? Remember the sixth petal of self correction.

But what about this double rose? Rose of reorientation. First the crisis of balance and then reorientation. The crisis of balance is being worked out to a certain extent in petal number four, but it also can come in petal five which is related to Aries. Aries is connected to reorientation. Where the crisis of orientation as it is said on page 472 or 473 of Esoteric Astrology, crisis, orientation. So three phases, I am the lower sun, maybe four, I become sick of being the lower sun, I recognise the higher sun, the higher and the lower suns are balanced in my life, I attempt to upset the balance by directing my energies towards the higher Sun. So, let's just say several phases not three phases. Really orientation, facing towards the light, facing towards the east, east is the place of rising self and I orient myself towards this higher attractive power within me, more so than with petal four, there is a balancing act and here there is a shift ray orientation and a strenuous movement towards the higher sun. This is called the path of aspiration.

So new types of energy come into the nervous system, the nervous system is conditioned by a rose and the soothing of it, we might say, through rose solar fire for the nervous system and not just the separative and often abrasive fire by friction.

0:27:20 Maybe there are two levels of rose however. There is rose in the earlier tier the rose of the original three. May be evolution or more love of the lower, or lower ego love, I guess. We have to be careful there because it is after all the petal two, isn't it? The new rose may be more the love of the soul the devotion to the soul, or what we would say to the soul in others? All this will have a powerful effect upon the astral body, so much rose and so much ray six as a result of us.

The importance of Neptune. Venus and in general of the astral body experiences related to this petal. You have to be honest and that's in both related to rose roses elevation, he arose – the lifting up to the cross, the idea of rose, arose, uplift, the cross. They all come together.

When dealing with the second ray we have to work in the realm of what I might call related ideas. It’s kind of a mercurial thing ,you look at ideas, thoughts, things which have kind of a connection with them and then you concentrate and they all come together and reveal the network of relationships which reflects pure reason or the pattern of things as they actually are. Pure reason reveals the pattern of things as they actually are.

We're dealing here in a sense with the second point in the solar plexus center when we're dealing with rose, from the lower to the higher and then from the higher point to the heart. This might even be two stages of elevating rose where we go from red, rose, to still paler rose, bringing it to the heart andthe first degree is pretty much bringing the sacral center to the throat center, hence the throat center again is important here, because of the elevation of the sacral center to the throat center and of lower mind to a kind of higher mind, maybe not yet abstract mind.

The third ray is important then because it rules the throat sort to which the sacral center elevation accords with the sacral center elevation is directed. So ray three is a pivot petal, a pivot ray as well, and it's a part of the transfer, relates to Libra spot of the reversal, Uranus. A lot of a three, also it's part of reversing and turning towards the higher aspect.

… The Aryan race is not intended to be psychic. Why is that there? Anyway, the higher psychism is not really starting here and it is mentality which closes off the normal psychic reactions which we share even with the with some of the animals. I don’t know if we're going to share psychism with a starfish or a worm or something but we will with some of the mammals.

What about blue? Blue is going to be here as well, it suggests the heart and always the transition from the sixth through the second three.

Is there royalty here? Yes, this is the royal petal in a way, for better or for worse. Nobility can develop here, but we have the royal blue the real royalty and it depends on love and the real. The spiritual aristocrat loves there is a spiritual aristocracy and humanity as small as we are, and love is the determining factor and it can be presumed that a reasonable amount of mind is also developed when we talk about the clear cold light of intuition.

Blue is also suggested but we're not really here in any type of fullness of intuition, but we are beginning to intuit the nature of our higher self, that's where it goes – it's not intuiting the nature of all things in the planet in the impersonal and broader sense that we have with buddhi.

This is just blue and not indigo, because it is not yet indigo. Interesting, blue is discriminated from the indigo within the petals of the egoic lotus. It suggests the heart center and solar plexus center relationship or what can we say the relationship between that ray six and ray two. orange and blue are interestingly compliments, and the orange ball is grabbed at this point and he looks towards the five pointed star and there's a lot of me and mine in this petal at first. I think it was Ramakrishna, says all of egoism consists of ‘me and mine’. So the orange is the sacral center and blue the higher mind.

Will we find orange in the area of higher mind? I think it is more likely to be found in the area of lower mind. Sacral center is orange, throat center is the silvery blue. Interesting way as orange moves to the blue there is a movement towards unity of self. We feel in the second ray and it's not so much found within the sixth ray has orange moves to the blue it's like the possibility of lower mind moving into an appreciation of higher mind.

Blue and rose and their relationship together to the second ray. Master KH, who is the head of the second ray ashram at this time works with the rose and blue devas, so it would seem that the kind of devas he works with have a strong connection to this petal with its double rose.

Sacral center or lower elemental? orange. Throat center? Blue, higher mind but not exclusively. Letters

on Occult Meditation page 216 excerpt here of orange is a blend of yellow and red and esoteric orange is purer yellow. The sacral center the fifth ray and the first solar system and orange These are ideas we can tie together. The base of the spine is said to have a more reddish color and by the time we reach the sacral center it has turned more orange.

Kabbalistically it corresponds to Tiphereth. I guess we could look at the sephiroth and maybe have them handy too, perhaps, it might not be a bad thing. We see the tree of life here:

I think in the next one we see the planets connect with it. It’s not a very good image, but the earth is here, the moon is here, Jesod, Malkuth with Earth, Hod is Mercury, Netsah is Venus, and Tiphereth is the sixth sephirah, and I think it is connected with the Sun. Geburah is severity that's Mars, and Jupiter is Chessed or mercy. Here at the top, is it the crown, Uranus, or is Uranus considered to be number two, which is Chochmah and then Binah, Saturn always.

So our fifth petal is the sun petal and it has to do with the sixth sephirah among the sephiroth. Something for us to think about. There are quite a few images here of the tree of life [showing search] are there any that really carry the planets? … They’re small and not too bright but there's also obviously there's a whole system here of work with the paths. DK gets into that as well. These are in the Hebrew, so not going to help us too much right here at this time.

00:40:00 So many of us have been rooted in Kaballah and HPB was, and the Tibetan knows himself a great deal about it. … Not that the two systems are easily super impossible upon each other. There are correlations of course and DK has worked at these correlations, He even has a kind of a color scale concerning them. Maybe he borrowed that from the Golden Dawn, I'm not sure, but then who did the Golden Dawn borrow it from? There was a lot of borrowing going on in those days, so some people have

claimed this system for themselves when in fact it's very ancient. Crowley was one of the ones who did a lot of borrowing. Undocumented borrowing, unauthorized, unacknowledged, undocumented. We cannot be so egotistical that we can think there's anything new under the sun; in the infinity of infinities nothing is new future or past it's the infinite sense which contains all potential and maybe the essence of actuality is contained in it as well.

Anyway Tiphereth is here, and that is the central – I wonder … We're changing our three colors of love here and we're kind of changing our adoration of our lower ego into true love into what can even be called soul love and we're using the rose color to do it.

Additional colors involved in the petal process? I seem to be including just about everything: red, orange, green, indigo, yellow, the oranges. Then of course and red is not part of the petal structure but still it seems that for some types of egos that red will show. As in the aura of the savage individual red shows strongly, I wonder to what extent it will show in the lower part of the lotus? Maybe not as a color and that is associated always with the lower petals but sometimes perhaps not one of the standard colors but will show. Anyway, the color red will evoke the assertive personality coming under the red of Mars.

Orange is sufficient also for the sort of personality as the exoteric color of the first ray, it is involved with assertion. Orange and the fifth ray, I am separate. Leo is involved with that; the ability to distinguish the self from other selves. I am separate, of course that comes in at the very first petal, after a while one realizes one's apparent separation and for a long time one is under the spell of that realization I am separate and I assert the separate self. That's the orange connected with the first ray and the fifth ray.[VS: Leo conveys the first and fifth rays, and the very first and fifth, middlemost petal, share this color of selfhood, flame.]

Green is the color of the consummated persona because the personality is the third aspect of the three periodical vehicles and green associates with the fourth chakra or heart chakra – at least in some scales, some methods of presenting the chakra. [VS note, this ‘rainbow’ spectral assignment of colors to chakras appeared in the 1970s and was taken up popularly, but without basis in esoteric knowledge. See VicktoryaStone YT channel for rainbow spectrum video, description holds explanation.]

Actually DK is giving us a different color, but in terms of the very center of the spectrum comparing the center of the chakras, then green can be found [VS, yellow is more recognized as the central, most light filled, middle color in the electro- magnetic spectrum with the Newtonian color division of seven]; green is a healing color related to the heart and the heart is a healing center.

Indigo is the esoteric color of ray five and definitely related to Venus and to Libra, as DK has assigned. A tipping point. The early [period of the] petal is orange, and later, the petal maybe relates to higher Venus. This color is not found in this petal, but it is a color which the individual can use to promote the second ray and to develop a higher part of the fifth ray, which is trying to learn something about this higher self, the fifth ray higher self.

In this petal of we're going to have the contrast between the brilliant light of the personality really reaches the stage of quite fulfilled brilliance in and of itself and the growing the light of the soul.

Yellow is related to the sun and to the brilliant mind and this is a buddhic petal in the sense that the first degree the buddhic influenced is felt subjectively; it's not yet a fully buddhic petal that's more of the

eighth petal, but there is a reflection of buddhi coming in later in the fifth petal process, the pivotal petal for human development. This middle petal is a great point of synthesis and we've talked about the red, the orange, the yellow, the green, the blue, for the transfer from the solar plexus to the heart uniting of those two solar plexus and heart the indigo for a synthesis, that is the personality and hopefully it will be a synthesis that will reflect spirituality and then the violet for transmutation. All the colors can be found related here I think as more and more colors begin to show up in the number of petals we will find a more obvious place for all of the energy factors.

Rays implicated on the basis of color? Six for the rose, the orange is ray five, and rose again, double, and blue, ray six and ray two. We have three times ray six. Obviously strong aspiration here. So much of this ray six suggests the heart of the Sun through Neptune and a higher form of ray six, not just the red of desire. We are really lifting up the heart unto the lord.

Ray six. Towards what will want to orient oneself? That is the question. There's a strong choice in this petal between selfishness and selfishness. Libra is there with it's relation to Uranus and so is Scorpio with its relation to Uranus and to the process of determined a reversal. You go the other way with Uranus, it is a planet of reversal.

There's a kind of commitment of the soul here – treading of the path toward something higher, a higher power that's the sixth ray. So, so much six ray here it makes sense that aspiration and the path of aspiration should begin here in the later part of the organizing and vitalizing process. The higher point of the solar plexus begins to be active and it's oriented towards higher objectives than those of low desire.

What is the major sign in the series beginning with Aries in the counter-clockwise or natural order? Leo. Obviously we've been talking about it, Aries, Taurus, and Gemini, one, two ,three, cancer four and the Leo five. Two selves, two suns, which one will you choose? I think the battle between selfishness and unselfishness or at least the tendency towards unselfishness is very strong here.

A Day of Judgment will come in the fifth round, the fifth petal will be involved and the war at that time will decide whether we have egos with a little ‘e’ or Egos with a big ‘E’. DK oftentimes when He uses the word lower ego he still means the soul, but for our purposes we can discriminate sometimes Ego with a capital. He will represent spiritual triad and it can even represent the monad. There is one place where he goes it's all caps but in that case I think it is the triad, page 177 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire.

Leo is a very important sign for this petal. Let's just say the most human of all the signs we are told, and you get the choice here, the choice of being a normal human being of rather high development, as a personality or of beginning to be a member of the fifth kingdom of nature, still a human being but moving into a higher kingdom. That is a choice. I mean you're not at the higher kingdom yet – that’s coming in for advanced man and for generally for the initiate of the first degree and even the initiate of the first degree is only an early member of the Kingdom of God. But by the time we're the master of the wisdom we are very much a full member of the Kingdom of God. We are the true sage and we're ready to move into yet another kingdom the kingdom planetary lives.

00:51:20 What is the major sign in the series beginning with Aries in the clockwise order? Here it is Sagittarius. Sagittarius is the sign of integration rather and alignment all the personality is lined up and obviously and really oriented a new direction is conceived here at the fifth petal.

Ray six is strongly related to Sagittarius, so Sagittarius is only reinforcing the powerful blue and rose, ray

six it is found here. Ray six devotion and idealism, aspiration, integration, and direction all of these fit together, which way do you glorify yourself as a personality or do you have the idea of a higher self? So we set said to set our sights upon a higher goal and everything lines up in our personality to help us reach that goal. I see the goal I reach that goal and then I see another. But definitely the soul in incarnation is setting its sights upon something new at this point.

What is the major sign in the series beginning with Pisces and moving in the clockwise direction? It is Scorpio, that means Scorpio is doubled. Scorpio stages the release of the lower ego from its own self-preoccupation, Scorpio takes the lower ego apart and we have the so-called death of the personality or of the lower ego. Death of the personality doesn't mean it is useless or dead in terms of its efficiency and its applicability, no, it's dead as a major center of focus, we're no longer living from within the personality as if it were, as if it were ourselves.

We are at that point now where we can look at other signs implicated and the meaning of. The science and religion of the fifth petal. We've looked at the clockwise and counterclockwise series, one in the clockwise and two in the counter-clockwise series, Aries, Sagittarius, and Scorpio.

Now let's see what else we might have here. Is the Taurus-Scorpio axis involved? There's high aspirational idealism, the highest aspiration idealism is found in Taurus. There's also a lot of light, Taurus, and a lot of pride, Taurus. So light and the need to enter the dark in order to have more light that's Taurus and Scorpio and Scorpio such an important sign here in terms of the turmoil. It is assigned because it is the middle, water sign, and it's a sign with the clockwise wheel beginning with Pisces.

Always the sign opposite of a sign which is important in the petal will all be important as well and the rays, lots of ray four here. For the struggle and the turmoil, right? We learn of Taurus, let struggle be undismayed. The struggle and turmoil fit with these two signs, Scorpio and Taurus. Sagittarius? We've discussed that it's the striving to turn direct once attention to the real away from the love of form and to the love of God which is real and the higher type of Sagittarius person loves truth.

Scorpio? Yes, a must for all for all the turmoil and learning to take the first steps which lead from the fourth kingdom to the fifth kingdom. Gemini, the higher sun and lower sun, higher self and the lower self, and a strong second ray aspect and the sort of conflict or duel between them. It is kind of interesting that dual and duel are related and unless we have two we cannot have conflict.

Aries? Well the crisis of orientation is here, let’s go to Esoteric Astrology page 472 or 473, the crisis of orientation, under Aries, its quality is reversal. So it's here that the first reversal of the wheel is occurring and so it fits quite well I think. The turning of a new direction, starting a new orientation, Or-rion, and Orion such a magnificent consolation and possibly, obviously associated with more than one ray but its brilliance associated with the second ray and the relationship finally to the Christ. But it is also the great hunter and it has a lot of the sixth ray in it as well. Anyway towards a higher sun.

What about Libra? Getting ready to reverse the wheel for the first time and having to choose between the pairs of opposites. We have not had to do that before but this is a commitment. The Libra ascendant with the Leo sun, and maybe vice versa, reversing the wheels, so we are making an important decision about whether to follow the sun of lower ego or the Sun of higher self.

We're not so much dealing with Cancer or Virgo here, or Pisces, they all have a strong moon, they all have strong matter. But in a certain sense as I said the egoic personality is the highest lunar expression;

it's an ahamkaric expression and has to do with that part of ourselves which is lunar and the strong light which can come from the lunar self, albeit it is reflected light.

Is ambition here? Certainly there is, of course. Then what about Capricorn? You stand high on that first and later gain some humility after Scorpio does its work. I think Capricorn has a fittingness here, to stand high at first; you're so happy to live this life of the dominant personality for three, seven, or even eleven lives, things have come together and in some way conflict has ceased. There may be conflict between you and your environment but the internecine conflict of petal four has ceased. In other words, struggle with even the personality elementals themselves, but when the personality has really integrated it's not struggling within itself, it is just trying to express power, its own type of quality, and then it gets into trouble with the environment and with persons in the environment.

What about Aquarius? Well, the sign of genius and of the spreading of that light of genius. Really Leo is also spreading the light of genius. In our society, to be a genius is the greatest thing because it's a society largely determined so far by third ray objectives. And maybe to have that kind of brilliant mind is the peak of the third ray development process, the Brahma development process.

1:01:40 But there are other types of intelligence more and more, we are speaking of emotional intelligence. Usually in the early school training it's all about the mind. If a person has a very loving nature, that's nice, if they have a very strong nature, that's nice, good for them, but it's all about the kings and queens of our school system are those who have the mind highly developed. This is really some of the distortion, an incomplete picture of what man really is.

I used to be that way myself, and I have friends from the olden days who have remained precisely that way. It seems like they have not moved into the second aspect of divinity. Counting the first aspect of divinity as something of great value in itself, this is not the usual thing that you find in the various schools. So we need a more balanced approach. Anyway, Aquarius, a major sign of genius and of synthesis.

What about Pisces? Perhaps, because of relinquishment, we have to let go of the old, lower ego and lower sun, it's about relinquishment and the loss of attraction for the ways of the previously splendid personality.

What about signs implicated on the basis of the color? Well, there's no sign for that rose color unless it is Pisces, and I think with the exalted Venus and the special rulership of Neptune in Pisces, rose can apply. I'm thinking of Master K.H. and his strong Pisces compliment and how the rose and the blue are so strong for him and we can see I think those rose and blue in relation to Pisces.

Orange, of course, Leo. Rose again, no sign, and blue, Sagittarius, rich blue. And Taurus, deep blue, maybe more Sagittarius. Taurus indicates the light of Leo is the light of the soul. Taurus is … if we go to Esoteric Astrology we find on page 330 the various lights, and 329:

2. The penetrating Light of the Path. This is of beam of light, streaming forth from the point in Aries, and revealing the area of light control. EA 329

The penetrating Light of the Path. This is of beam of light, streaming forth from the point in Aries, and revealing the area of light control.

These are such occult words, but when the light of the soul grows sufficiently within us, or any of the higher lights, they are means of controlling that which we encounter – the environment and the general elemental life. I think we see how powerful Taurus is in relation to the path.

Major consolation most indicated? Pleiades still, but now Canis Major and Sirius. Pleiades is perhaps beginning to fade, in the first stage of personality splendor, the Pleiades are still involved (and of course are involved on much higher turns of the spiral; they are the great cosmic source for our local cosmos and they're also a source of cosmic buddhi from which our sun is nourished, our solar logos), but we're talking just on the micro cosmic level.

Sirius is coming to play Sirius in relation to Venus the first sense you might say of Sirian light. Sirius is so close to the sun; our sun is like an attenuated Sirius in a way, they are they are a pair together. I don't know technically whether our sun's cosmic mate is Sirius, but they certainly have that kind of connection which makes one think of a relation between the head center in the heart center or maybe the ajna and the heart center with our sun playing the role of heart center.

Anyway, we are becoming loyal to the direction in which the soul can be found. We're following a new master, the higher self, the soul, and no longer the personality. If you think of it, the image of the loyal dog following his master, interesting enough Orion is the master. Sirius fundamentally a secondly ray star is following maybe a higher prototype of the second ray.

Of course, they all have various rays. If our little earth can have all seven rays, in all these combinations, just imagine Orion with its seven first magnitude stars; it has all the rays. So when we say, ‘the ray of Sirius is thus and so’, we have to know on what level we may be speaking. We're hardly in a position even to know the three major rays of stars or even of planets, yet alone constellations, but some hints are given and we can infer. All of it is very relative in this ever-shifting interplay in time and space. So much depends on the time in which we ask that question.

What is the ray of our sun most in effect? It's the second ray at this time because the solar logos has a second ray personality, still important, and a second soul, but will that always be the case? What will be later in this relative shifting of things? A first ray personality for our solar logos in the next oldest system? Will there not be a time when there are fourth ray monads, perhaps fourth ray monads, and certainly ultimately a second ray monad emerges.

When you ask what is the ray of any particular being, we have to know something about the cycle that it is in, and the rays of the different vehicles that may be pronounced in a particular cycle.

This is very strange – what can we substitute for Sirius? I’m not sure what this means, but let's just say the Sirian vibration is certainly coming in at this petal, the solar angels as Representatives of Sirius are solar angels now becoming downward gazing upon the personality. I think there's a lot here about Sirius, Leo and Jupiter, at this petal it certainly is opening the door to a higher self represented by Sirius and higher Leo and then Jupiter expanding out of the third aspect of divinity and into the second.

Any secondary constellations implicated? I'm choosing a few, Little Bear, Argo, Hydra, Corvus, Crater. The Little Bear is orientation and is related to Leo and Polaris is the tail of the little bear so there is a new orientation. The Little Bear suggests also the ajna center of a great Being, and this involves not only seeing the direction but integrating of the personality. The Argonauts, they were beginning their journey in the ship Argo and we're beginning the spiritual journey here really.

Now there are three particular extra zodiacal constellations associated with Leo. Do we realize the nature of the Hydra, the sea serpent? The serpent of egoism perhaps? It's a very big, very long, sinuous constellation, spanning six or seven constellations. We have to wrestle with this serpent. Maybe Hercules wrestling with the lion is like the wrestling with the serpent of egoism as well. There are many more associations with it but I'm trying to keep it limited to our subject, to the degree I can.

Crater, the cup of The Grail being filled with the wine of the higher self, we might say, this is potentially there (… how does it go … from page 822, isn't it? … A Treatise on Cosmic Fire page 822, higher Intelligent love. So very Venus in petal two. Putting these words together we see the different emphasis the first one ends with knowledge, the second one ends with love, the third one ends with sacrifice, that's the final noun in the series.) So the Cup is the grail being filled with the wind of the higher self which is the source of higher intelligent love. Very Venusian in that respect. It's also the cup of karma and I think I under Scorpio there's a lot of karma to be released before the first initiation.

The stem of the cup and the cup opens up and you begin to feel it. There is a kind of receptivity here, to the good, and to also that which must be expiated before moving further. There is the search for the Holy Grail. The Cup in the causal body in a sense are the same. The Grail and causal body. At this petal you can tell people that they can begin to go in search of the Holy Grail within themselves. It's so much like the human being to search without for that which is with him, but that is the result of the initial extroversion of the consciousness into the world of unreality, in the world of form.

There is the crow, it is the ruling the third decanate. He picks up the serpent. Interestingly, he is not friends with the serpent; he represents the law; the Crow is the omen and the messenger of Gods, usually some sort of Saturnian news, it tells you your fate.

… Someone suggests that in London there's the London tower and seven crows. I don't know that reference, but of course many people have met the crow in the London tower. Sometimes we hear that expression, maybe the crow (as a bird) doesn't taste very good, not like a chicken or a pheasant or something like that, and we have the expression eating crow. So eating crow is like swallowing your karma.

1:06:00 There is the Hydrus is here, a great water being, here probably is telling us something about the astral plane and its relationship to the lower ego. It has a connection I think with Cetus the Sea Monster, the enemy of little fishes, the little fishes are the soul. When searching for the grain we are searching for the second aspect of divinity. I'm not sure, some of this happened more in the past, but these are some of the constellations that we can consider related to the second petal and its process. We do face Cetus the sea monster. He is the raging elemental forces which have at last to be tamed by the personality as a center and then by the soul as well.

Cassiopeia, the enthroned woman, and strong woman? Materialism, possibly. Leo, one of the most material of all the signs, interestingly enough. Perseus, the hero? I think we could begin to find him here as he begins to overcome and overpower the personality linked with the third aspect and all of the hydra-like activities of that personality, maybe a little bit.

Eridanus, the River of incarnation? Maybe not so much.

Auriga, the Charioteer? Well the integrated personality covering speed, with speed. See, if you're born and you're working through a fifth petal process and you have these other constellations they can contribute to the process in various ways.

Orion? Definitely, luminosity, the whole fact of this as a lighted petal. Orion has sometimes been connected with the solar plexus of the One About Whom Not Maybe Be Said. Although I wonder whether that distinction should not be given to our own local series of seven related stars in the Seven Solar Systems of Which Ours Is One. Nevertheless, the great light and the unblinding of Orion, he was blinded and then sight is restored.

Lepus, the Hare? I don't think so. Canis Minor, or the aspirant? Definitely. Canis Major? Definitely, lining up along the Sirius, Leo and Jupiter line.

Argo? The beginning of the big trip. Ursa Minor pointing the way as they as the ajna center does. Ursa Major coming in touch with these higher forces, the father aspect. Maybe a little. …

Bootes, if he is the Christ. Some think that Bootes and Centaur should be reversed here and the Bootes is more the climactic figure and the Centaur is more involved with the creating the sacrifice necessary of our skin, our hide, our outer self.

The Crux is the Southern Cross.

I'm not sure how many of these—there is becoming in touch with the Christ aspect through the solar angels in that respect.

Lupus? Are we willing to sacrifice the ego and lay it on the altar? I suppose so.

We're not yet crown, Corona Borealis.

Serpens, it's like Hydrus, the personality is the lower serpent and we have to recognize that and deal with it.

Ophicus is the healer and the serpent handler. Maybe we have that within us which can handle the serpent.

We are strong here and both Leo and Scorpio which rule the fifth petal are preeminent signs of Hercules.

Lyra?

Ara? It's the altar and I haven't emphasize that enough, I've talked so much about the falling gripe or the falling falcon, but this wonderful sign of the harp. We can see the bow and arrow and the harp are closely related. We are sacrificing here, but it has to do with Apollo's heart and the sevenfold structure, the seven strings related to the seven rays. There is creativity here at the fifth petal and the creation, using those seven qualities.

Ara? Well we are laying more consciously the lower ego upon the altar.

As for Draco, it’s just so powerful it seems it would come in somehow a bit later.

Sagitta is the arrow of pain. It's a little premature for that, but certainly when the king is sick, the lower ego was sick, it may have been struck by this arrow of – well it decomposes the ego, we might say. This arrow that indicates the Via Dolorosa.

As far as Delphinus goes, we are disporting happily in the waters, rising up and out of the waters, we are doing that. The creativity and often joy of the fifth petal.

Aquilla is the Conqueror. Well, maybe at the third initiation and at the fifth initiation it will have a real application. I suppose it should be connected with Capricorn in the third decanate of Capricorn it is the initiatory decanate, and we do have that initial initiation here at the fifth petal the first initiation.

Cygnus the Swan, It flies very high.

Probably not Pegasus, I think the winged horse, the power of the integrated personality.

Pisces Austrinus, that depends on what decanate were using, I sometimes put this in the first decanate because Cygnus is so climactic in that respect. I wonder whether Pegasus is the central decan it actually with all of these extra zodiacal constellations.

Anybody who's born in the sign has all three of them, but one or one of them might be in more relation to your particular decanate of birth and the decanate of birth are important, as DK assigns some meditations on the basis of decanate of birth.

The fish savior? Not yet.

1:24:30 The band? Well, we're breaking the band or at least the band is not holding us so strongly to the personality.

Andromeda? Perseus is helping to free her and this is the beginning of the process of freeing the and chain the soul.

Cephus, the King? Well, we're not really yet coming in touch with the father aspect.

So we can go through these.

We can do that with the decanates, too, but the extra zodiacal constellations are important.

I suppose something that I really haven't dealt with and should is the decanate rulers that could be important in different phases of the petal process. I think it may be getting a little too complicated, but we have to be aware of our decanate and how the decanate affects the signs. With that sign we are working in a certain area of petal experience or across a range of maybe three, and with our decanate ruler, the particular decanate ruler in our sign will tell us even more about how we can be working within that field of experience. However, if we try to lay out all of the indications for everyone it will be filled with error and it will maybe take away the possibility of people figuring this out for themselves; it's probably too complicated to get into, but it could be considered.

That gives us an idea of these extra zodiacal constellations which may be connected with the experience in the petal.

Synthesizing planet most associated with this petal? Saturn is the really integrated personality, but Neptune is the reaching out for something higher, and that's really going on here once it is realized that the personality is limited. So first Saturn for the integrated personality and then Neptune for reaching towards something higher.

The division of the synthesizing planetary triplicity most associated with this petal? Neptune sub-Neptune, and in that sense is a double rose. The heart of the sun influence is incipient here, we don't have necessarily the fuller heart of the sun influence as we will at the second initiation, but there is a higher power and we're entering in a way potentially a mystical phase which the mystical, kind of say this the mystical phase dissolves former personality structure.

So we're moving in away from the personality to the stage we might call it the aspirant mystic. Up until this time the physical sun has been the source, now the heart of the sun is coming in strongly.

What is the neighboring planet most associated with this petal? We're talking here about Mercury, Venus, and Mars as our neighboring planets. We're definitely in the Venus tier.

The division of the planetary triplicity most associated with the petal is Venus sub-Venus or Neptune sub-Neptune. They both emphasize that which rose gives in terms of attraction to, and magnetism to, some altogether more refined aspect of ourselves.

The sun the moon the polarity most associated with this petal? It's both sun and moon really in a way we said the egotistical personality or ahamkaric personality is the peak of lunar developments, but then

also we are moving towards a true and higher sun. Sirius I think is represented by both the sun and the moon. Somewhere it talks about a division of seven energies, three energies, and two energies; the seven energies are of the Great Bear, the three energies are of the Pleiades, might relate to the non-sacred planets, Mars and Pluto and the earth, and then Sirius has two energies associated with it in a way.

The sun and the moon I wonder if that has some relationship to the duality of the makara. It was just a thought anyway, maybe some relationship to the duality of the makara. So the sun is powerful in this first really solar petal.

All of the non-sacred planets? Maybe they can all be found here in some form of expression but the main thing is, it will sound strange to say there are two suns here and one of them is more lunar and the other is more solar. One of them is really related to the path of initiation and to the second ray development, we’ll call it the ahamkaric sun … is a lunar sun because it is bringing the lunar vehicles to their highest point of expression and illumination.

1:32:30 Let's look into the question of the planets. Look’s like we have most of them here: Vulcan, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars. Is the earth here? Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Well there are so many more planets than this but these are the major ones, so Vulcan and the sun are one, Vulcan for the sun and the soul begins to grip its instrument. Part of that grip is the strangling of the lion, the lion of pride and maybe it doesn't really happen completely until later, but already the lower ego is in the grip of the higher lion. If the soul as Vulcan begins to grip its instrument then Taurus is somehow involved. The forcing process begins, Vulcan bends the personality to its will, it starts the process going. This may not be as much in earnest as in the Virgo petaled where all kinds of shaping up has to occur, the petal of self correction we might say.

But this at least is part of it a major petal of aspiration and somehow a higher power is beginning to get hold of the lower ego tendencies. Vulcan and the sun are one. The grip, the fist, pressure, bending, pushing, these are all Vulcanian words and kind of interesting, the will to expression tied in with the seventh ray. Vulcan has some of that in its rhythmic aspect, so some creative potential must emerge here, in form. The will of the higher of the pairs of opposites is being felt and the response of the personality is to aspire.

Mercury restores sight to the blind. So I begin to see in the light of the soul. In relation to Gemini the bridge between two suns begins, and one must learn how to balance them, and not just balance them as if they each have equal rights, but balance them in such a way that the lower of the pairs of opposites becomes the instrument of the higher.

We have the lower antahkarana and it [laughing] a peculiar statement, it can be yearned along.

There is the aspiration to rise along the line which Mercury provides and Mercury does have to do with elevation into the heights, let the group service, Aquarius, indicates that Mercury speeds the group along the upward way. Mercury does speed upon the upward way, we're not there yet where we're talking of the kind of Mercury that's found in the advanced rules, but it does bring elevation, it creates a pathway from the lower to the higher and this ability to, in a Gemini-like manner have these two really communicate and become more related. This will improve of course as we get closer to the path of initiation. Mercury is also the star of conflict, so it fits in here with these very conflicted petals, where the battle between the pairs of opposites is very strong. Maybe not as strong as in the eight petal, but

strong, and many lives too. In the eighth petal, well, how long will it take?

It can take a long time between the first and the second initiation and work is being done strenuous and abnormal work in the eighth petal, but after that the initiations can be quite close to each other.

1:37:30 What about Venus? Well as I say ‘in spades’, excessively so, the brilliant light of intellect or soul. Two kinds of light are associated with Venus, the higher and the lower higher and lower mind and two minds unite in this case, not yet the abstract mind which is more maybe connected with Mercury with Saturn with Uranus. Through Venus the light content of the causal body increases. Venus is the brightest of all the planets from our perspective and could be related to the appearance of the radiant lotuses, the beginning of the radiant lotuses whose radiance only increases as we go along even to the full unfoldment of the causal body. This brightest of all planets is connected to our earth, very intimately so.

I wonder about the Earth, it’s symbol is a four; it’s a three going to a two … the process on earth for humanity is very similar to the process here in petal five. The movement from the three to the two. This is also from the planetary perspective from the third ray personality to the second ray soul. That's our big task in this pivot that we are making in this central petal from the third aspect of the second, from the lower sun to the higher sun, we are reversing the wheel we are changing our directions. So the Earth has its place here, well the earth has its place in everything we do of course, being earthlings at the moment.

Mars, Venus and Mars are fighting here, Venus represents the higher self and Mars the integrated lower self, so for turmoil struggle and a battle between my good self and my bad self. Mars is really here. It is an ego battle. Let's just say Ego battling with ego, little ego. There's a striving here and Mars is part of that, once Mars is harnessed to the higher of the pairs of opposites, there is much striving, and I believe in the statement it says that a man strives to turn his attention to the real.

Of course, it's related to Scorpio and related to Aries which is beginning a new direction, reversing… direction towards the second aspect in earnest. So there's personality assertion with Mars of course. Mars is also the concrete mind. But maybe this is more related to petal three. Mars is the entire personality in terms of this petal. Mars is excellent for fiery aspiration, the higher part of Mars. It can be involved in failure due to the wrong assertion of the lower self, so you have asserted yourself egoistically and you are rejected by your environment.

Martian assertion will only go so far, when we wake up with it and say, ‘well what did we really accomplish?’ and we realize there's much more on the other side that is not having to do with personality assertion. Sometimes people after they fail they come to the new age teaching and how to direct your life after failure as a DK talks about the uses of the lessons of failure.

But if you do become an aspirant and this is the petal in which the aspirant will appear we can tell that by studying human group number six, these are the creative people they do all kinds of sort of things, and then he calls them the aspirants. Mars can be very useful when it's not tethered just to lower desire and to the assertion of the lower self for its own sake.

Jupiter? Definitely so, various personalities success and fulfillment here you have it all but is there more? Having it all, that is Jupiter attached to the personality per se. It's also involved with all manner of expansion and this is the expanding of the self with a little ‘s’ into the larger Self. As I said before, ‘nothing fails like success’. Well at least you reach your outer limits, the outer personality limits, and it

can expand no more. We need something of the law of sacrifice, and it's hard for one who has gathered so much to begin to think that sacrifice is the way of further acquisition, but of spiritual goods rather than material.

The sun could be here as well, the sun as well as Jupiter, the blazing petal, brilliance distinction noteworthy in us, standing out from the crowd. They are both the heart, sun is the heart for the average human being, Jupiter is the heart for the disciple. So we ask ourselves in what is our heart with the invested, and there is often the way we find distinction in relation to our personality vocation and then finding a subtler type of distinction in relation to carrying out the purpose of the soul.

This is such a second ray petal and so related to the heart because the solar angels are in a way from the heart of God and they are really looking in here and doing their work. Initially the Sun and Jupiter have their place in these kinds of experiences. And later of course, after the fall, the sun is the heart of the sun and Jupiter offers the higher opportunities which are not just personal opportunities.

1:45:10 We can have the big ego, that is Jupiter too. The self from the lower self looks awfully big and one loves it, or later one becomes big-hearted and begins to love others. I don't know who said here the ‘big baby’ comment but I suppose Leo has that childlike quality here and can be quite self-indulgent.

The lower Leo says, ‘there's no room for you and for me because I need the stage and I can't have a stage if you're there too.’ There's not much leverage in that, is there? Eventually one realizes hey there's just too much of me and it's getting dull. Because everyone else is the rest of the universe and you're just one small part and if you try to make the part into the whole (except metaphysically okay), but if you try to make them part of the whole you're going to be missing everything else.

It gets a little tedious ‘the burden of the self’, so to speak, as it's called in Aquarius, but we have this in Leo as well. The concealed higher point. Therefore, Jupiter can be involved here at first in exaggerating the importance of the personality but then later putting all things into perspective, right? Then turning towards the love of the soul the vision of the Soul that expanding life by reaching towards the soul the expanded lower self.

Master Morya has called the ego ‘a big ball of fat’, somehow it just impressed me, and of course that's a Jupitarian reference, it’s a lower application of Jupiter to a lesser thing and later we stand back and we embrace the whole world and our self becomes immensely full because we begin to identify as everything else, too. We become inclusive, as DK tells us, including everything including the entire entourage. So under Jupiter we develop a more inclusive vision of the self we get into, depending on our ray of course, philanthropy, through largess, helping others financial largess is one of the ways and there's all kinds of largess.

So our expanded consciousness begins. Jupiter is very important here. Jupiter gives you the hint you're in the beginning of preparing for this Sirian initiation regime Leo is the sign in which you take the first initiation in or under and Jupiter gives the rewards of this higher Christed perspective.

Saturn. Certainly related to Libra and a decision that has to be made, and the limitation of ego the lower ego. Saturn is the planet of choice and it's here between the lower self in the higher self the choice is made. Saturn contributes gloomy Saturn to this sense of not having lived up to one's potential. So it gives that sense of failure and of accurate self assessment we cannot remain hopelessly optimistically inflated about our nature. But we begin to see ourselves as we are and this can contribute to the fall, to

the crash, and also to a realistic reassignment of goals. We are under Saturn learning the lessons of selfishness.

Saturn in Leo, a very high combination from the Shamballic sense, but that we can't get the recognition we crave or deserve. You have to think about Leo in general because this man did not have Saturn and Leo, but he was one of these people who went berserk and started shooting people. But he has so much Leo and Chiron and his whole complaint was I am not getting the recognition from women that I deserve and this allowed him to just go berserk. So many people are snapping now because they don't see a way out, they don't see the path and light is not falling on their countenance, so they turn back and do horrible things out of despair.

Saturn and Leo can establish yourself as a despot, forcing others to submit your personality and force others somehow to give you that. … Probably this is good because the lower self is limited and one might as well know it that it is hopeless to try to fulfill the self by means of the lower self. So, if I seem limited, I am, and even if I were the fullest of the full in my personality sense it would still be extremely limited.

There's also here the consequences of selfishness and of selfish expression and expansion. Karma comes in. We have to make sure that we are making the right decision at the fifth petal because a line of selfishness can be started here which may be hard to discontinue. Sometimes in Libra decisions are made later which take a person off onto the path of materialism, where did this tendency begin? I suppose you would have to do reincarnation research and see the degree to which selfishness was established, but egoistic selfishness can be established here at the fifth petal and difficult to break. The karma of wrong self-assertion, Saturn in Leo, that's the lower interpretation of it. Of course, making up for the deficiencies this is also possible and later, it's just a conduit of will from Shamballa.

We could say the path begins with Leo technically at the first initiation. Yes technically, but in terms of orientation, determined by choice, it is here. The path of the heart of love begins here. So as petal five leads to petal eight the Saturn in Leo will show more Shamballic will than the more personal individual meaning a petal five personal.

We organize petal nine after petal eight, Sanat Kumara, the will and identification do all come in, I discussed this earlier after we worked in petal eight at the second initiation with its reflex action upon petal six then we have to apply yourself to the discipline of identification and Sanat Kumara so the will become real factors in our consciousness. Repentance is turning in a new direction, turning back. The monad in extension has to repent and Saturn helps us do that by bringing home to us the consequences of our acts through Karma. Saturn will punish the wrong type of assertion and we will be humbled. The assertion of the soul is what is desired, and not the assertion of the personality. Okay that is Saturn.

1:55:00 What about Uranus? In petal four we are on the way to the uniqueness of Uranus. The personality is unique, I'm a unique personality, I'm special, I'm an original. That can be really said in the first part of petal five. In the earlier petals that can get you in big trouble because if you are breaking the taboos, if you're breaking the standards of the group in which you are found, they punish you for your uniqueness. Saturn is dominant and Uranus is not considered desirable. We have so many instances of this now it's almost like the Middle Ages being revived, when you had to be good at all costs which meant to conform exactly to the laws that were laid down and they were often religious laws.

Here Uranus is the initiator and the solar angel is an initiator, very definitely, taking part in the initiation

ceremonies, too, and bringing us towards our unique individuality through initiation. We're finding our unique place and when we do that our purpose is also revealed. The reversal of the wheel is aiming towards heaven and Uranus is the Heavenly One. Heaven is the place of established archetypes. True heaven is the place of established archetypes.

So reversing the wheel, a higher pattern towards which we reorient, the flashes of light reveal a higher self, a higher identity, flashes of real identity come in here. That is an identity petal, petal five is an identity petal but identity multi-layered and you can't necessarily discover all levels of the identity simultaneously here. Uranus is here for transmutation, the changing of the quality of vehicle from the consciousness and transmuting the love of the soul from the love of God or forms to the love of reality so Uranus is involved in the transmutation of the love nature from lower to higher. We do need the higher love and transmutation under Uranus will give it to us. Uranus is an elevating planet, it seems to increase the ethereality and vibration of all that it touches. It is the great coming forth of archetypal ideas, of course they do have to be materialized, maybe by planets with a more material basis such as Saturn and Vulcan.

Anyway you have a new identity here at this fifth petal and so Uranus is about your real inner identity. There's a lower version of this, I gotta be me, but that's the beginning this is beginning of the [laughing] Declaration of Independence, a declaration of those who move from the mass consciousness into the state of the state of individuality. Maybe we could say something else kind of amusing: we could say, ‘hey, I gotta be we’. This is more the I Am That consciousness.

So the new identity is that of the higher sun, there is still a higher sun where I Am That, and That Am I, I am That I Am, the identification with the one, which is our great objective. So uniting the high and the low, the sense of the high and its connection to that which is low, and Uranus under the seventh ray is a great connector, a connector of the high and the low. Uranus using the seventh ray is a great connector of the high and the low.

What else? Uranus?

I mean every one of these planets has its place at this pivotal petal, and not just any old place, they actually have an important place. Neptune at first can give us the glamour of personality. The Neptune in Leo, maybe the most glamorous person in the public mind is Marilyn Monroe, Leo with Neptune rising. Who was this person really? That was the big question, with her Gemini sun, those who knew her and I knew people who did know her; she was much different than otherwise she's seen, all that veil of magnetic glamour with Neptune rising.

But from a higher point of view it's the mystic of the heart type, and involved maybe unwisely but that's how it is with the renunciation of lower mind oftentimes not complete renunciation of lower mind, so that people say like this, they say, ‘what's meditation?’ It's not what you think. So there's a play on words there of course. Well maybe some type of meditation is a lot about what you think or don't think. So much depends on the ray type, people are renouncing the lower mind, maybe prematurely, DK tells us we have to have that well-stocked mind, but certainly we have here the heart of the sun, and at this petal some influence of the heart of the sun is coming in maybe for the first time and you feel you want to pursue the higher sign which essentially is a representative of the heart of the sun.

The solar flames are coming in here appropriately. The mystical inclinations towards the path where you kind of want to give up everything else, everything that is concrete behind you as you follow the path,

that's the mystical approach, but it's just the beginning of the path of aspiration. Anyway Neptune will help dissolve that lower sense of self.

2:02:30 Does Neptune really have anything to do with reality? Because some people just talk about it as a planet of illusion, but looked at in terms of the ageless wisdom, Neptune is the monadic second ray planet and it has everything to do with the reality of the heart of God. So it is in a way the planet of all in the presence of perceived greatness, when you have all and wonder and fascination. With higher orders of life, Neptune is involved. So we are really reorienting, re-facing, re-penting, re-versing, re re re, Uranus. Neptune has its place in giving that object this luminosity towards which we strive. It is a luminous object, the higher self is a subject which is a luminous object.

Pluto? Well, the powerful personality with ray one, lots of magnetism, and getting one's way. Now we have a problem with Scorpio, the very first phase is called the monster of selfishness. I suppose this can occur earlier in the process, but when there's a strong mentality and a sense of egotism along with it then we really have the monster. So, [we have] Scorpio, the lion, maybe the king of beasts, but the dragon is not far behind, or maybe it's ahead.

Pluto gives failure and death. In the fifth petal, failure and death in petal five, you have to die of something and the King of the lower ego is dying of the wound from the arrow of Pluto that reveals limitation of the lower ego, and then makes one feel futile and as if all of this striving, and grasping and accumulated has been for what? It’s like laboring mightily to produce a mouse, and he was the whole universe and suddenly you look at this grand ego that's been filling up your space of consciousness and it's a little nothing. Pluto is restoring the perspective there, restoring the more cosmic perception by pricking the bubble of illusion and of glamour and now you no longer see yourself as you did before.

The death of lower ego, the sickness of the lower ego as the higher Self is such a great, profound dissatisfaction and we might almost say dissatisfaction bordering on nausea. Pluto does rule nausea, throwing up, getting out of your system the poisons that have become toxic to you. That which is disrupting the systems and therefore is the healer. Pluto digs down to discover the reason for failure, and it's always going to be in the last analysis ageless wisdom. The king needs to be reborn and Pluto kills the old king in favor of a new and Pluto in this sense is death and rebirth. So re-generation, this is another one of those re- planets, with re- planets you get a new chance: you can do it again in a better way.

… What is the planet involved here according to Niklas? Well we talked about the importance of Jupiter and expanding the consciousness. We have definitely the colors here, we have seized the orange ball of ambition and we are leading the games. But maybe at a certain point here later in the petal, maybe at a certain point in this petal the orange ball gets away from us, and we cannot find it, and this means we are preparing to walk to enter the tunnel, into the cave, the tunnel for that long, lonely walk towards the cross athwart the blue oval.

2:07:40 Musical notes? Absolutely. Here we really have them. Always starting on C. It's a good reference point [toning] do, re, mi, fa, sol. The sol note, dominant note. That’s the fifth; three over two; you reach majority at the third initiation. Three over two is the ray of vibration. In other words, [vocal emphasis] the dominant is vibrating three halves, faster than the tonic below it. So this dominant note is the solar note, the Jupiter note, the blue note, and definitely we are hearing this note.

Two notes are heard at this petal and we say one is fa, for the integrated personality, and the other is

sol, for the emerging soul. Sol and soul, obviously it's a play on words but they are really close. I-sol-lated unity, sensing soul, I see soul, I see the one being in all of this. The soul revelation gives that to you.

Are there musical intervals in the musical chorus involved at the stage? [toning the notes throughout] Do, mi, sol. Do, mi. Mi is the bright personality which is beginning to be responsive to the sol and that is the major triad in the key of C: do, mi, sol. It begins and at fulfillment to be found at the third degree when the soul will be the strongest. It’s not only the notes that are there, it is how strong they are. Do, mi, sol! –then the sol will be stronger. For most people right now mi is stronger: do mi! sol. So it's the intensity of the note that counts as well as the note itself. Sol then is the weakest of notes, and at the third degree it will not be. What we hear coming in now, and before all we could hear is do mi, the sad personality, or maybe we start to move to do mi!, mi, we're quite happy with ourselves, but we do not yet have the real presence of soul; we are the integrated the personality, and we feel just fine about that. Do mi! I'm very happy with myself, and sol comes in – and for awhile when soul shines its rays upon the personality and we make it do mi sol!, personality doesn't look so good. The personality gets sad realizing its own limitations compared to soul.

The language of music. This is the old Pythagorean fraternity and it's extensions. There's so much that music is going to reveal to us in the New Age about healing, and about alignment, and about really finding the work of the Soul in our life, making sure that it expresses. I mean, we talk about getting into alignment, but the notes of music can facilitate that alignment it can facilitate the emergence of the energies that we need, just like the use of colors can.

2:12:00 Is there any crisis that's characteristic of this stage? We've got a couple of them: a crisis of orientation, crisis of balance, crisis of the battlefield, Aries-Libra-Scorpio. The crisis of orientation is ruled by Aries, we just saw … page 72, 73, Esoteric Astrology, I need to orient myself my personal self to the soul.

Crisis of balance, under Libra, self-direction, is partially in effect. Can we say that the crisis of balance represents the entire middle tier? In a way, and certainly reversing the wheel, ‘do I fall backwards into Virgo, or to do I go forward into Scorpio?’ That is the question. In other words, ‘am I willing to fight the good fight in all the battles to make the soul the conquering hero of the fifth petal, or do I fall back into materialism?’ That's one way of looking at forward and back, but we’re at the fifth petal, which is Leo so we have to decide do I go backward into Cancer or do I go forward into Virgo and into self correction. In other words, ‘do I veil myself in Cancer which compromises my true individuality’, or ‘do I go forward into the method of looking at the personality meticulously and correcting with must be corrected?’

The crisis of balance was happening in petal four, the balance of the positive, but it continues here so before we really decide to go for it, as it were, go for it spiritually, there may be some back and forth and them the real battle under Scorpio begins, and Scorpio is powerful here. Definitely. There's kind of a mini-crisis of the battlefield here because Scorpio is so strong at this petal. The crisis of the battlefield. Well it kind of goes on for the first, second, and third initiation, but especially at the second initiation where one can then enter the stream. Is that an important point of achievement?

I'm remembering DK talking to a man who thought he was a fourth degree initiate, but DK sure him that he could take a second initiation in this life if he did well, and he said and therefore you see we rate you highly. Second initiation is a high mark, a high rating, and one that is quite close to fulfilling the third and the fourth initiations which can be done in one life. That's daunting, isn't it? Initiation, Human and Solar

and 84-85, you can be done in one life or in the next. Wow.

We have kind of a mini-crisis of the battlefield. What will our orientation be? The higher sun or the lower sun of egoism or egotism. Egoism is a philosophical reason behind egotism. Egotism is a special state of loving the ego and exalting it all above others, and egoism is the kind of perspective that allows one to even think that there is such a self that can be exalted.

Is there a cosmic law associated with this petal? The law of attraction and beginning of the law of synthesis in a reduced manner. … The Law of Economy is fulfilled in the integrated personality. … There's that the number five has come to fruition, the star shines forth. The third law, the Law of Economy, or is it the first law? It is the first to appear, and third qualitatively. The law of attraction to the higher self to the soul, and attraction to other forms, but in the spirit of love, not just considering them forms but considering what lies behind them. The law of love. Well, the solar plexus center is there and also ray six. The sixth systemic law but of course as a systemic law it is greater than the specifically human laws. Throughout these three love petals the quality of love has to grow and it has to be not so much love of form as love of that out of which the form emerged.

Sometimes we have people involved here at first with real personality love, a lot of romantic love. I'm remembering that Roberto Assagioli actually did write about the seven rays under different names and he talked about a second type as always needing to be falling in love, or always needing to be in love. Maybe himself knew something of it. I was kind of shocked when I read it, because I hadn't thought in those terms, that I'm sure it is true. Leo is among the most romantic, so that when you have Leo and the sixth ray it is falling in love. Can the romantic novels, which always deal with the supposed reality of the one you love, and your supposed reality as well.

2:18:20 Law of synthesis? Maybe, of the lower sense personality integration is a kind of synthesis, all is one (lower case o) and later I am ONE (capitalize everything). So it’s a lower reflection of the law of synthesis and I am number one. That is all about the dominant personality.

Are there any systemic laws most associated? The law of magnetic control, law fixation. The law of magnetic control allows the solar angels to control its personality. So there's a little bit of that it's coming in controlling from the soul level, but just in the beginning law fixation. It's connected with ray five and the sense of fixing upon the ego or fixing upon the higher self. … What is the identity upon which we fixate? And is that identity fixed and stable, and recognizable? That's a question for us.

Also the law of love which is increasing and is trying to orient the aspiration towards the real. … Love, laughing out loud, law of love, also law of disintegration … the last disintegration. Think about that the personality of certain point of the process of this petal begins to fall apart as an object of attention. I mean it's still there but one does not value it in the same way; one is looking for higher objectives, turnings one's sights to higher things.

Is there any soul law that we can find here? By now the solar angel or soul is coming in. The law of sacrifice and the law of service? Maybe the first real understanding, that sacrifice of the lower ego is needed. The blind sacrifice of petal number three is not accompanied by much understanding. We're told that the sacrifices are carried on in an unconscious manner. The law of sacrifice is beginning here and it's the beginning of the giving up of selfishness which is more successfully completed at the full unfolding of petal six and working in petal eight. I sacrifice the lower sun for the greater sun, this only intensifies from this point on. That there is a higher self, a higher power, a higher objective, and I

sacrifice for it.

The law of service? In the later part of the petal – the third part of the petal process we might say, when we are becoming the aspirant. It’s about allowing others to emerge helping others emerge and we are getting the ideal of service, the aspirant has the ideal of service. When you say the aspirant has the ideal of service. In terms of being the practical disciples, would be carrying it out in a systematic willfully controlled manner that may come a little later, but at the latter part of petal number five the idea of service is really emerging and does condition the behavior. Somewhat, maybe spasmodically.

Sometimes those who do service, says the Tibetan, get more out of it than the ones they serve. And this is the question of motive isn't it? Service is popular. Service is acknowledged, service makes people respect you, love you, and so you serve, but what is the motive? It can be a personality-inflating motive. So we have to study our motives here very carefully. Mostly it is not quite right, it's also a tax break, right? It's good for my career to be perceived as serving, but what is the genuine thing? I don't know.

I see Angelina Jolie, a very prominent actor I think he's very good has a wide, wide range, and but there is some idealism there, that one can sense some political sympathies, whether one agrees with them or not. and she seems really to want to help. I notice that Brigitte Bardot also, both of these people are sex symbols in the beginning, and later something else happens, like with Bardot’s work on behalf of the animal kingdom. Like Angelina Jolie, I think there are people who are going to be working on behalf of women's rights, absolutely needed in this world at this time when Venus is so challenged by Mars. Ultimately, Venus of course will win and finally there will be a balance that is neither the matriarchic of the Atlantean period or the paternalistic approach of the Aryan period, but something more balance for the sixth root race.

What about the astrological triangle most associated with his petal? Well these different signs, Leo, Libra, Scorpio, Leo. Well is that a triangle? That seems to be a kind of a quaternary … You meet Leo again at a higher turn of the spiral, and then you start again, Leo, Libra, Scorpio. So it's the self, I think I am another self comes into view and you weigh that new possible self against what you thought you were, you make a decision in the direction of the higher of these two, and you fight it out as a consequence and then you are established on a higher turn of the spiral with a new identity, higher Leo.

It's the same here with Sun-Venus-Mars-Pluto, and Sun/Neptune. We are the third aspect sun, we are an integrated personality. But Venus comes into view as a possibility, and it represents a higher self. Remember the sun is veiling our non-secret secondary planet Venus represents the higher self but you want to go towards that and that requires a deadly struggle against all of your other tendencies That's Mar/Pluto and finally your established when you've overcome, you’re established in the heart of the Sun ,which is ruled by Sun. Neptune is the sun, again, but it is the sun sub-Neptune, sun veiling Neptune. So you see how these kind of quaternaries, which are really triangles can work.

The senses and their extensions most connected with this petal? Taste, sight, touch, smell. I wonder if hearing the voice of the soul? This little is a petal of synthesis in a way because it's so central and it summarizes all of Brahma, because it's the five. This petal summarizes all of Brahma … The senses come together because for the first time we are touching actually the fifth kingdom, the touch of the soul. Maybe also we should not leave hearing out of the picture, because we hear the voice of the soul, the voice of the sun …

2:28:40 We are hearing the voice of the soul. The first thing we do is hear, and since the third ray is that

there climaxing in the bringing together of the Brahmic aspects at the first initiation. The third ray is associated with hearing so hearing is first, then touching the soul, and I wonder later, at least in the chamber of initiation we see the soul. Taste? Well we begin to develop a taste for the higher of the pairs of opposites? This is discrimination in the battle between the higher and the lower. We develop a taste for the soul. Sight? What self do we see? Are we catching first sight of the higher self perhaps? Are we seeing beyond our own surface self? I like that idea of the surface self, I sometimes call it the familiar self. The self that is so often seen in families where it sometimes is difficult for the parent to actually see the soul.

But we can see the soul imaginatively at least, and sight is related to identification first touch of the Higher Self hearing the voice this old right hearing a different voice. The voice of conscience … is coming in and ray three and hearing. In a way all the senses and their extensions are being used to detect this something other, which is the higher self and if we link smell with idealism can we begin to get the scent of the soul. Some of the higher perfumes do come in I think around the time of the second initiation this is a bit later then. So smell, a high ideal emerges and we have the scent of the soul, and we try to polarize within. This is the higher correspondence to smell of rose, the fragrance of rose, the beginning we might say of the perfumed stage, which really is completed in the eighth petal. We become lotuses with perfume.

So imagination, emotional idealism, discrimination, spiritual discernment – all of these are factors related to the different senses I suppose. Imagination to the sense of sight; emotional idealism the sense of smell; discrimination sense of taste; spiritual discernment is found on the third level of the mental plane and probably a number of factors that are going on there. There's sight for one thing and because the solar angel is now downward gazing, more of the psychic powers are starting to make an impression the consciousness of the solar angel which includes the types of consciousness that the soul has. These are all beginning to make their impression.

What about the guna? There's tamas, rajas, and sattva, maybe more rajas … tamas is a kind of stability, but we really are striving forward here towards a new type of reality; the rajas would be involved. We're not settled on it yet perhaps. Rajas-tamas, rajas-rajas go everywhere under the second ray. I'm recalling one of the disease-inducing problems of the second ray, that he runs everywhere and tries to fulfill everything and gives to everyone too much, so there's a kind of superfluity, a difficulty with abundance that has trouble being sustained in the right form.

These are in a way the rajastic petals altogether, all the three petals of the love tier. … We are in raja-raja. Sometimes the fixed signs are connected with tamas, but if we look at tamas as connecting with the third tier, we have tamas, tamas-rajas, tamas sattva. This is the first tier and then rajas: raja- tamas, raja-rajas and then rajas-sattva. That's what we're dealing with, double rajas (rajas-rajas), a very active petal here because we're making a real transition here, and we’re at the climax of the brahmic aspect, the third ray. It is in a way the hierarchy petal, and hierarchy we are told is very rajastic, whereas sattva is Shamballic, it’s the stability of the spiritual will.

2:34:50 So it is helping the balance between the soul and personality, some of that is entering because we still need the personality even if we are oriented towards the soul. Personality should be the tool of the soul more and more, so some balance between them is needed. But this is a real go-getter petal, petal five. So many real transitions. What a tremendous transition it is, when you take the first initiation and enter the Kingdom of God. You're still a human being of course, the Soul is a master, but you have entered the kingdom of God, a chohan is not still a human being He tells us.

Are there any of the three advanced themes, which are isolated unity, inclusive reason, and presented attributes here? Well maybe, it's just on the way to isolated unity, which is ultimately a Leo state but we have not yet isolated the highest of the Leo phases, which is the one self.

The constellation or planet which is here? The sun, possibly as an expression of Isis. I'm recalling that from Sirius comes influence which passes through an unnamed planet, unknown, maybe Isis, and then through our three synthesizing planets and then into our solar system.

Chelaship? Maybe, this little chelaship after the first initiation, when it occurs with the final unfoldment of the fifth petal?

Are we reading the book of form? Maybe. There's the work of form in the book of life; we're not into the book of life yet, I wonder if we're into the book of soul as it were.

In the ACLRI process. … AAIACLRRIFIIDI or spelled out, evolution ambition selfish integration alignment crisis light revelation unknown integration fusion unknown duality and identification. Well there we have whatever this monstrous word is here. … we're definitely in this phase, first of ambition and then ambitious and integration together, because we achieved through ambition, integration which is selfish. Then comes a degree of alignment and we have plenty of crisis and some degree of soul light is coming in.

A number of things are coming together here in this fifth petal; however, many lives it takes DK talks of many lives. Well it can't be the kind of many lives that are involved in the development of petal number one or two, but still many shorter and shorter number of lives associated with each petal until as we rise the very last petal can be maybe developed and opened in one life, two lives, and whereas just thousands of lives can be involved in the development of opening of petal one.

2:39:00 … That's interesting, the light of day is Scorpionic, and the light of the soul would be very important. The light of day is Scorpio and the light of the soul is Leonean. So the light of the soul is beginning here, the light of the Higher Self we might say.

Keynotes from the angle of form. Let maya flourish and deception rule. We're going to have a battle with the maya and deception of the ahamkara itself. … So the ahamkaric self is myopic and it is not real. We are deceived by it, we're always deceived by our personal self and then we have to outgrow it. We begin to realize that what has been so very familiar is illusory and that comes as a shock. I mean everything that used to be revealed the Tibetan tells us is right here and now it's just a question of lifting the veil and that's sometimes a very subtle process I would say.

Keynote from the angle of the soul? I don't know why we are looking at this. Warrior am I and from the battle I emerge triumphant. I'm not sure why this is being offered; I'm not sure I wrote that. But it's true to the extent that Scorpio is part of this, it is from the battle in which I prefer to be the lower ego and think only of the lower personal self. But I want to say that I am That is becoming important. I am That which Self am I. So that is a big question at this point. We're definitely under Libra choosing to go for the higher of the pairs of opposites.

Organs of action? Probably all of them are involved: the creativity the hand certainly; the tongue or the mouth, the voice and tongue? Definitely because creativity is found here. Also in the sexuality is very

very important for the expression of the integrated personality. The feet? Well, the hands, the mouth, the sexual organs? Maybe not so much excretory organs? Maybe not. The feet? Well, they take you places, go here go there, but maybe it doesn't strike me as important as those three, anyway five organs of receptivity. Well, it's all about the senses again, right? So all the senses are involved.

The alchemical journey? I don't know so much about it, I'd have to research that. I have colleagues who do and maybe my colleague in New Zealand, Julia Tarnawsky maybe she can get into this alchemical journey. But you can tell that we are moving away from base metal certainly, and the sun is gold, golden. We are not there yet but we are heading for the gold. It’s a bit primitive but certainly we can discuss because alchemy really is a whole process of transformation and so is movement through the petals.

We can make parallels with the Tarot deck … and certainly Strength is there. It's Leo, the Leo petal particularly. Curious and you have to kill the lower lion, the Hermit is coming next, but we can kind of relate peace to the petal Sagittarius. Well Scorpio was death and this is the Scorpio card, I would think there is the death of the lower personality or at least of attention to it, it may not be quite killed off until we are reaching the third and fourth degree, but at least we are dying to excessive attention to the lower personality. Think about the world, the flesh and the devil, probably there are Tarot cards that would show that when we get into this. … Kind of interesting how Tarot works, these factors synchronicity and how every moment is revelatory, and the tarot is revelatory, but we don't pick up the revelations of the moment and maybe the tarot can help us with that. Anyway the lion card, Lion or Strength, and also Scorpio which is Death. And well the Sagittarean card is Temperance, but the idea that we're connecting with here is a reorientation.

The mental chakras? Of course are continuing because we need them for our creative work. Maybe I don't know so much about those, but I would say that the knowledge petals and the love petals are both involved here.

The eightfold path? I think we should maybe start including these, of course, I think we could start including the factors of the eight fold path … I'm not sure we're really ready to begin the four noble truths. I don't know how much these are realized, but perhaps some initial realization of the four noble truths as we begin to move towards the increasingly-defined higher self, that all life is inseparable from suffering and the reason for suffering is attachment to the world of form and the cessation of suffering is caused by detachment from the world of form and finally the means of this detachment of the Noble Eightfold Path.

I would say this will intensify as we move along, but when we become an aspirant here, right aspiration, right conduct, right effort – all of these, all of these, all of them, really all of these can begin and intensify, all of the Noble Eightfold Path can begin and intensify as we move towards the third initiation and the fourth initiation. Actually after all let's remember the Buddha was training arhats which makes them minimum minimally of a fourth degree, and that's what's so interesting because the Buddha himself, the True Buddha overshadowing Prince Gautama, at least in my view, had been for 2,500 years at least the master of the wisdom and the head of the Spiritual Hierarchy.

So we have to disentangle the work of Gautama from the work of the Buddha, just as we have to disentangle the work of Jesus from the work of the Christ, I believe.

2:49:00 The eight means of yoga? Maybe. … here I've been very fortunate to have the assistance of B.L.

Allison who has helped me organize this and she has made copies in eXcel, which I’ll look at later, but the four noble truths are here, the eightfold path is here, right view, right intention, right speech, they are sometimes given differently, right livelihood, right mindfulness right concentration, I wonder if I can …

In terms of the Ten Commandments? Well they are pretty restrictive and there's a lot of no's there, to keep the elemental nature in check, but now we're looking for other things.

Beatitudes are here, the new commandments are here. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Well okay, this is coming. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. This is all the promise of the fifth

kingdom of nature. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Alice Bailey says, the trained will inherit the

earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness – and that is happening here in petal

five—for they will be filled. It's going to happen increasingly. Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. The true Compassion I think is coming

later, following the second initiation when the astral body is transformed and buddhi is coming in.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. Just has a lot to do with the ninth petal. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. I suppose with a higher fourth

ray is coming in and we are offering ourselves in crucifixion to the world, the cross of the heart, of the making of peace, in the spirit of peace all come together.

Blessed are those who are persecuted, because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This will come in at the eighth petal, but especially at the fourth initiation.

We have the support of these commandments. Devotion to Ishvara, fiery aspiration – that we will find here, devotion to his Ishvara is the inner God. Harmlessness, we have to learn it. Truth, learning it especially maybe in the seventh petal. … are there any others here about the have various abstentions? No, they come differently so. … here we have the five commandments, more like the Ten Commandments that advises you how to refrain from harm. Yama, how to refrain from harming, and then those are the commandments or yama and then needs Nijama are the rules, and we had left out of these rules somehow the internal and external purification. I think there's only five above, maybe I'm mistaken but anyway we can go on with it at the moment.

We have the fiery aspiration, internal and external purification coming more in petal six, five, aspiration coming even now in petal five, spiritual reading coming particularly in petal seven along with spiritual discernment, devotion to Ishvara continuing as we go along. All of these five, I think these are a handy way to look at them.

Increasingly, there will be the meditative abilities and let’s look at the eight means of yoga: …The commandments or Yama, the rules or Nijama, posture, asana, all as we begin to do our meditative work in the in the sixth petal, right control of the life force or pranayama, this is coming in in the last four petals. Abstraction or pratyahara, not immediately. Attention or Dharana, that can come in at petal number five because Leo rules the stage of concentration. Meditation or Dhyana in petal six under Virgo in contemplation beginning with petal seven and Libra. So I think we have what we need to consider these in the other petals just coming back to petal five here.

The three advanced themes? Were not ready yet for isolated unity, inclusive reason, presented attributes, a little bit of the motion towards isolated unity.

The fifteen counsels? Yes, we can begin. Because – learn the meaning of the illusion and in its midst separate the true from the false, view of the world of thought, all of that kind of thing, this can begin. … The Fifteen Counsels are found, particularly interesting, in A Treatise on White Magic, page 473, some of these we can begin.

These rules may sound too simple for the learned aspirant but for those who are willing to become as little children they will be found to be a safe guide into truth and will eventually make them able to pass the tests for adeptship. Some are couched in terms symbolic, others are necessarily blinds, still others express the truth just as it is.1. View the world of thought, and separate the false out of the true.2. Learn the meaning of illusion, and in its midst locate the golden thread of truth.3. Control the body of emotion for the waves that rise upon the stormy seas of life engulf the swimmer, shut out the sun and render all plans futile.4. Discover that thou hast a mind and learn its dual use.5. Concentrate the thinking principle, and be the master of thy mental world.6. Learn that the thinker and his thought and that which is the means of thought are diverse in their nature, yet one in ultimate reality.7. Act as the thinker, and learn it is not right to prostitute thy thought to the base use of separative desire.8. The energy of thought is for the good of all and for the furtherance of the Plan of God. Use it not therefore for thy selfish ends.9. Before a thought-form is by thee constructed, vision its purpose, ascertain its goal, and verify the motive.10. For thee, the aspirant on the way of life, the way of conscious building is not yet the goal. The work of cleaning out the atmosphere of thought, of barring fast the doors of thought to hate and pain, to fear, and jealousy and low desire, must first precede the conscious work of building. See to thy aura, oh traveler on the way.11. Watch close the gates of thought. Sentinel desire. [474] Cast out all fear, all hate, all greed. Look out and up.12. Because the life is mostly centered on the plane of concrete life, thy words and speech will indicate thy thought. To these pay close attention.13. Speech is of triple kind. The idle words will each produce effect. If good and kind, naught need be done. If otherwise, the paying of the price cannot be long delayed.The selfish words, sent forth with strong intent, build up a wall of separation. Long time it takes to break that wall and so release the stored-up, selfish purpose. See to thy motive, and seek to use those words which blend the little life with the large purpose of the will of God.The word of hate, the cruel speech which ruins those who feel its spell, the poisonous gossip, passed along because it gives a thrill—these words kill the flickering impulses of the soul, cut at the roots of life, and so bring death.If spoken in the light of day, just retribution will they bring; when spoken and then registered as lies, they strengthen that illusory world in which the speaker lives and holds him back from liberation.If uttered with intent to hurt, to bruise and kill, they wander back to him who sent them forth and him they bruise and kill.

14. The idle thought, the selfish thought, the cruel hateful thought if rendered into word produce a prison, poison all the springs of life, lead to disease, and cause disaster and delay. Therefore, be sweet and kind and good as far as in thee lies. Keep silence and the light will enter in.15. Speak not of self. Pity not thy fate. The thoughts of self and of thy lower destiny prevent the inner voice of thine own soul from striking upon thine ear. Speak of the soul; enlarge upon the plan; forget thyself in building for the world. Thus is the law of form offset. Thus can the rule of love enter upon that world.These simple rules will lay right foundations for the carrying forward of the magical work, and will render the mental body so clear and so powerful that right motive will control and true work in building will be possible. TWM 472-475

View the world of thought, and separate the false out of the true. We can do that.

Learn the meaning of illusion, and – the golden thread of truth. Possibly.

Control the body of emotion. We can control the body of emotion, we can certainly do that.

Discover that thou hast a mind and learn its dual use Absolutely.

Concentrate the thinking principle – We can concentrate the thinking principle in petal five. We can learn the thinker and his thought and that which is the means of thought are united. We can begin to act as the thinker. As an aspirant. We can begin to do. All these things using the energy of thought for the good of all. And we can clean the house in petal six very much watching the gates of thought cleaning out the atmosphere of thought and we can apply all these rules for ourselves.

So these counsels on page 473 in A Treatise on White Magic all can come into some degree of use from this point onwards as we are an aspirant.

The Fifteen Rules of Magic? I think we can refrain from those more as we approach the third degree.

I won't get into these other factors, a little bit of the sephiroth I did.

Archangels. Mercury, Hesod is involved, Venus Netsach. Tippereth is involved here, maybe not so much chesed which is mercy, and perhaps Geburah, which is strength under Mars. We can do that. We'll leave the higher trinity to later petals. And that's really all that has to be said here, I think.

2:58:30 Now we come at last to that kind of synthesis of comments contributed by many people over the period of the classes and things I've thrown down there, as well and we have a chance now to go through them. So let us go through some of these comments in category eighty and to see how they all kind of fit together.

There's lots of battling. Someone suggested the lives of turmoil and the creativity, possibly Van Gogh, people like that, but maybe more, because he was after all someone who was already a lay preacher. It was a combination with him of the sixth ray and the fourth ray, so maybe he had gone beyond even this point. Moments of great expressive satisfaction I think under Leo. Revelation of beauty and of inner quality and of personal quality. It's a petal in which to reveal your talents and certainly in the first part. The law of repulse enters and one ceases to create for the sake of being admired and creates for the sake of beauty itself.

3:00:20 There is a downloading of talent, the fifth house is connected with fact it can take many lives.

One of our Danish colleagues, a long period is involved here, the personality has to be formed, but also dynamically expressive, one is becoming the real identity before those three, seven or eleven lives. The soul, solar angel is downward gazing. It's like a spiritual conception, the quality of the solar angels is entering the consciousness and one in the aspirational phase can become an idealist humanitarian in the aspirational stage.

Can we hasten things here? The question came up, if we choose correctly, and I would say yes, the more we de-emphasized the personality, per se, and emphasize the source from which it comes the hastening will occur.

Enjoyment is a word that comes in here and I recalled this statement that Goethe says, the only true joys of the joys of personality. He was a great initiate actually, probably the third degree. I think he meant the joys of identity. Personality was a bigger word then and not in our technical use of the word.

So once we are satiated in this petal we can really begin to make progress, as I say, after the fall, that's that play by Arthur Miller and I think involves the story of his relationship with Marilyn Monroe, it's kind of a peak of the third aspect here.

I'm wondering about the Pluto in Leo generation.

I have no idea what ‘playing golf in Spain’ means, but okay, let’s just say if we want to just give into the life of personality pleasure, and being a kind of a unique person, Pluto will come in and undermine the whole thing and will come crashing down. I'm reminded of the people who say, ‘well wouldn't be nice to have breakfast in Paris?’ So they to jump on their private jet and they go have breakfast in Paris. If you think about the whole and the expenditure of money, fuel – just so much energy expended simply to indulge a personal whim. Saturn in Aquarius is not really entered yet for us, and we will be much disciplined in thinking about the welfare of the group.

If we overdo our ambition we get the consequences, there's no question, because it's very separative to overdo the ambition and the person who separates himself of course will have the backlash.

It's a very rich petal, many things coming together here. Not necessarily against each other, but certainly coming together, the intellectuals coming together, ray five , the artistic, ray four, Leo the expressive the heart and mind of the person. Very rich archetypes come from a higher level altogether and what we need in our creativity is some kind of connection with the archetype of realm. Otherwise, it's strictly personal creativity based on our contact with our own experiences. That's fine, but we're meant to be representatives, artistic representatives of a higher purpose.

Someone was saying that the teacher in the high school, colleagues in the high school, felt like petal five, they were individual rich in mind and also bringing in idealism.

Here's the question, to what degree do such good and accomplished people discipline themselves and correct themselves according to higher spiritual standards? People can look magnificent be wonderful and all that and they're living according to their personality tradition as it is called and then when it becomes necessary to correct the personality tradition that's when there can be quite a bit of

resistance.

Well, what are people saying here, a nice house, feel well, well being, a nice place. I don't know what this means. the whole way around petal five they have many aspects archetypes for petal five, ambitious, harmonious heart, satisfaction, social skills, interested in well being of the personality. Now that's very interesting, because if he cares not for the suffering and pain of the lower self, if it is immaterial to him whether happiness comes his way or not, if the sole purpose of his life is to serve and save the world and his brothers, if his brothers need is for him of greater moment than his own, then the fire of love is irradiating his being and the world can warm itself at his feet.

Now that it has been initiatory standard, that's not exactly the petal five standard, is it? So in the very. That's the very first rule for applicants. The initiatory standard is higher than petal five, and really even initiates of the first degree cannot live up to those four statements I just quoted from rule one for applicants. It's more like the third degree then you can really do that. People say, ‘well these are applicants for initiation’, it's really – in many ways to fulfill that, even that first rule – you need a strong anchoring in the initiatory process.

So we rely upon society to get the full benefit out of this petal. When you've just had too much of a good thing, that's the Jupiter part of it, too much of a good thing, you become sick and long for leaner days which Virgo will provide.

It's kind of a sheep and goats question here, the good sheep of the human family we're told. Maybe we should have more categories: sheep, lions and goats. Cancer in the sheepfold, the Lions of individuality, the goats of initiation, but there is a dividing line here and people can become lions of all kinds, they can be the deadly lion preying upon others, or the lion who is the real leader and giving opportunity for others.

[This orange text was being done in Denmark.] Talking about a soccer player and environmentalist's beginning the feeling of goodwill, where does goodwill really begin? Well we already have in petal two fully unfolded and some petal three, the nice good people so the goodness is there, and especially if the monads are along the second ray line, it’s going to filter all the way down. Goodwill can begin quite early, maybe it's not so much the emphasis in petal three but by the time we get to petal four and with a lot petals I would say an emphasis on goodwill can begin in petal four, conscious emphasis. The nice good people, but maybe a little bit ineffectual. They can be quite easily regimented this still somewhat part of the mass consciousness we go through phases where we are more or less receptive to the two-four-six line, and to the goodwill that it implies.

We have here also petal five, the innovative and creative mind. Uranus, so connected with Leo, is the planet of innovation. We've talked about the place of Uranus in this petal, it certainly is beginning to make the real individual. So high up, hierarchy really wants to stimulate the evolution of the fifth petal. Well to stimulate evolution to say and also that of fifth petal people can help. DK talks about the era when personality would be a problem. There is coming an era when there will be many personalities of a rather integrated type, and it will be another problem to handle. I think people in the early part of this petal do have difficulty with their human relations possibly until they are humbled, until then there is difficulty with the human relations under separative Leo.

That said, and then we I guess went over to California. One of our members said sixth ray, he asked himself a question, ‘who is the ideal person?’. And he came up with an answer, ‘I am the ideal person, I

don't want to be anyone else’, and he made a good promise to himself he would not be, and that's I think a fifth petal experience real identity emerging as the ideal ones. One’s real identity emerging as the ideal.

So we're beginning to sense the fifth kingdom even if we don't name it. We're turning ambition into aspiration with quite a bit of being the really good person, we're told who is looking out for the welfare of others as well as preserving one's own prerogatives, but we're getting the idea of ideal of service certainly towards the experiences which correlate with the end of this petal’s development. We're starting to transmutation under Uranus, the seventh ray, especially of the love aspect we are etherealizing the love aspect.

In petal two, way back there millions of years before, there was some movement from love of self to love others in a material way, and in terms of their form. But here there is a greater love of others. eventually becoming the love of the real, and others are seen in their reality and not as we imagine them to be and their form comes second, it's a secondary factor, we are looking for the real person here in this love petal and maybe we can find other people as souls. As we move closer to the first initiation we should be able to do that. Now so many people who are on the path of aspiration and trying to discipline themselves, they haven't really taken the first initiation yet, everybody seems to think that everybody has, but there's a really drastic period before the first degree, and there are many who seem to be applying to that degree. And a few applying to the second degree, I suppose.

Among DK students somewhere close to the second degree, but others had it as a more distant vision. As for the third degree, AAB and FCD, Roberto Assagioli were of third degree, another person was preparing for it and I don't know who else, if any.

As we've been saying, the struggle is going on and it's, as you try to transmute in turn the love of the subjective self to the love of the real, the two suns are struggling.

Someone was saying what is AA (Alcoholics Anonymous?) Well it could be, for some there are some very creative people here, but they're still the victim of addiction. For me Churchill is always a mystery. How he can drink a fifth of bourbon before lunch on a number of days and still save Western civilization from the Nazi onslaught. Initially, if he had given up, it might have all been over.

Is this the time when we're born again in terms of being of the Christian? Maybe not, maybe not, it's I think it's later. The born-again phenomenon is earlier than the distinction and individuality of this petal.

We were already integrating petal four but now this is more so and it becomes a powerful integration, that's the key, a powerful and creative integration, not just an integration so we are dealing with a powerful and I see it me and creative configuration and.

Not just the up and integration as important as that is but we can expect from the growing integration and the realization of one psychological self. There is a lot of psychological work to do before one becomes a really powerful creative integrated individual. Other problems arise then, but within the house, under the same roof, like I say, so many of us at a certain stage might be like Dr Phil's house where all these unlikely people are put together and see what happens.

So in petal five is the ability to move on to the. Higher mental planes or meditation and receive impulses from that part and aspirin can do that. Beginning of the sense of something higher which is guiding the

solar angel is paying attention and one feels that attention to a degree. There are lions on logoic plane, that's a very high hierarchy of the divine flames, a distant objective, which we have the early reflection.

The kings used to walk with lions who were such a symbol of the integrity of the true self. But am I the king of beasts? Because that is the personality.

Interesting that the lion did not eat that which was within its kingdom. That is perhaps coming from this author, Elizabeth Haich, Initiation someone brought that up.

Human beings would be more noble if they could be more lion like. Master Morya usually has good things to say about lions when compared with tigers. But even the lion can make mistakes: the first ray type, and he upbraided the first ray, the second ray and the third ray types: You Lions, you have killed the messenger, now bring relief. You doves, you have forced everyone to feed you, so you have to correct your ways. You rats, you have chewed upon many a book and not gained anything. [laughing]

Morya is really amazing, he says, ‘if you want to get people's attention just like in them to animals you'll get their attention quickly and the lesson will be learned.’ So you know the one, two, three, are you are you are an aggressive lion, a dependent dove, or well what can you say about the rat, chewing the books? Lots of futility there and not application I guess.

So after there is a touching of a higher mental plane and I don't necessarily mean the highest level of it, I mean the realm of the soul. Something higher begins to burn in one, a sense of despair comes on because there's something more pleasant on the normal levels, but something so attractive and meaningful from the world of the soul. And there is the torture under the fourth ray ‘pulled apart’ in different directions there is the—my daughter [Heidi] would like this, she loves the word wretched, so there is the wretchedness of the fifth petal.

Scorpio in darkness and struggle aiding in the transmutation from one sun to the next. It’s not necessarily a pleasant process, and remember, of Scorpio, Uranus the transmutative planet is the planet in exaltation.

3:21:00 Scorpio is found here, in a way double emphasis in this petal, it stages the release of Leo from the lower sun and released into the higher sun. It’s a very important petal, it’s sort of midway or halfway stage on the bridge from this time on the evolution is decisively spiritual. I mean there are a few aberrations where people out of ingratitude and myopic vision, they turn off and they maybe have nostalgia for former power, under the third aspect, that they turn off.

Anyway it puts a lot of strain on a person. Is the same kind of mental objectivity possible here that was possible in petal three. Well, I think you never lose anything, but there are other contending forces which may make it more difficult to apply.

What we need is objectivity amount the personal self, it's sometimes hard to stand back, maybe you can stand back from your body and observe and stand back from your notions, maybe even from your mind you can stand back but the whole personal self and what is your position? … The question is for the powerful personality is one more in it than detached from it? That is the question.

How detached can we be? I remember talking to a quite a first ray man, he was a psychologist and I think a lot of Scorpio and he says, ‘Just detach, just stand back. Detach.’ Just like that. Well maybe he

was exaggerating. Someone who knew what he was doing, and I'm thinking back on this is 40 years ago, something like that maybe thirty five years ago, and I just marveled at how he described it, just detach, that's all. It was the easiest thing in the world. Maybe for the first ray type it is.

If it was the most human of all the signs, is this the first really human petal? The first contact of the four with the five. Well, when it went to be really human beings and frankly Mars is the animal and until we reach the third degree we're still pretty much in one way Animal Man. We have to overcome Mars through Vulcan. I believe at the third degree the spiritual will has to overcome that solar plexus desire and the planet which animates the animal body.

So when do we really become human when we say oh you're a human being, but when the spark of mind enters and but you really are more Animal Man and Man is more animal than human for so long and maybe we don't really become truly human beings until the third degree, a real human being.

Anyway the solar angel is looking seriously for the first time, very important, taking over in a way from the general uplifting influence of the second logos. So, of course there's a reversal going on here, reorientation reversal of the wheel, first reversal, second reversal, maybe is occurring in terms of the temptation in the desert. During the temptations in the desert. So reverses the wheel that there is no backward drag. From the elemental nature. Or at least it's so much reduced or at least there's no danger that despite what's going on a man will be deflected. It’s not so much what's going on inside your personality the question is will you be deflected.

So. This is the first really determined orientation. To the inner God we may have had orientations towards God the transcendent earlier with less understanding and in other words real ignorance of ourself. The hall of ignorance is all about ignorance of our own human spiritual nature. Many people believe in God and they theologize about it and so forth and they may not know that the essence of God is actually what we are, it is God is in us and we are in God, and it basically of the same thing. Over duality in dichotomy many people have lost their lives. When you take an unwarranted and want it in the eyes of your present society, unwarranted step towards monad and you're in danger.

Anyway, this is really the beginning of soul cultivation from the perspective of the soul and not just a sometime response of a desperate personality. The soul is waking up now, in Gemini, and we have this dialogue, a two-way street going on, energy coming in and going up at the same – at this petal, there is a change of energies between the two suns.

Sagittarius is always in sight, at least imaginatively. A higher objective appears.

You’re contacting your own genius, which is your daimon, on higher self who had his more raptured, caught in contemplation and he didn't move off the spot. He was in communion with his inner God his diamond. He was a Leo rising as far as we can tell, great illumination, a lot of third ray, apparently, and Leo for integrity and the light and authority and being repeats, you're the teacher. The teacher of so many, somehow a combination of the second third and first ray, not sure how they all worked out. But he was fierce in battle so this is the battle to take on the responsibility to really go towards the soul and fighting our lower self and also fighting for the higher light. Ourselves and also for the highlight.

When is the Leo battle occurring? Hercules wears a lion skin when he first begins; he has done some work in Leo, but now he really has to tame the lower ego and become a higher self. So now Hercules must become the higher self. And not just master the elemental nature and become a powerful

personality, that is not the type of integration we as disciples are looking for.

We have here the beginning of soul life and by the time this petal unfolds … soul life has begun the monad is detectable within the soul, even if not in the brain, and the man has had the birth of the Christ in the heart. There's a bigger integration going on here than just a personality integration. It is the start of a soul energy system integration with a personality energy system integration, so it is an integrated personality pretty much, and now the soul brings in its energy system and integrates progressively with the soul, which it finally does completely by the fourth degree.

We're on our way, and what I say, the ship is hitting the fan; I think I'll just leave it that way, but the something is hitting the fan. We really have to finally deal with everything, a lot of stuff in the lower nature. Vulcan and Pluto force us to deal with this stuff in the lower nature, and it can get spread all over, that’s the whole idea. It’s an expressive petal, but on the other hand it can be contained as well and the more it is properly contained the more the person will rise.

3:32:00 The heart of the rose, radiating out to all 360 degrees: lifting, salvaging, helping some of the lower petals. It's the promise of this great radiator redemption, because we become radiant lotuses. The promise of radiatory redemption, radiator lotuses of the first degree, second degree, third degree, radiator lotuses keep on getting more and more radiant. So this is incipient radiance. There may be personality magnificence but we're looking for an inner kind of radiation.

It’s so important for both Capricorn and Leo to achieve humility. This is the beginning of humility, a sense of proportion is coming in, a sense of proportion enters and we see that the lower self was not all that big or wonderful. So this is a taking down a peg, this is a humbling. Seeing the lower self in proportion is a humbling. We won't call it a humiliation because that seems so deliberate, although the person may feel humiliated. Oftentimes it’s the reaction of one person to another person who is trying to compromise the first person.

But this is the foundation for later compassion because we suffer so much in this turmoil, endeavor, failure, turning to the love of the real, lead me from darkness to light. It's starting to. There may be some recapitulation working the earlier petals as the greater includes the lesser. Humility and compassion the basis of them are entering here. Also in the petal eighth, the path of suffering and even deeper compassion because of the bitter woe through which humanity on a fixed cross must pass, and humanity as a whole, because of the bitter woe through which humanity must pass.

There's a real stablished into the shift from being a particle, creating a ring-pass-not of identity from which one can influence one's environment. Are we the particle or are we the whole or are we all the particles? In other words, under Neptune some identification with others real identity occasion can begin. The ring-pass-not of self is expanding under Jupiter and Neptune. Of course, we wanted to go higher. But well, lower too, I mean we can expand and relate to the other kingdoms. The beginning of identification. It’s the unity that has to be isolated. We can say the unity must be isolated and this can begin here and be temporarily climaxed at the third degree, and a higher climax at the fifth degree.

So these people follow their own directives, they march to their own drummer, but eventually they hear that drummer in the sky, the archetype of drummer, and they have to begin re-establishing a rhythm which is more in line with the archetype of drummer.

What about occult schools? They have made their way somewhat in the world there's a lot more to do.

One must make one's own way, the initiate is self taught. We forget that and allow Bursiris to stand in our way; we allow the priest or the mediator to say, ‘you could reach God through me’, but then what happens to your higher self?

So we accumulate plenty by the time we reach this petal, and we must have something to sacrifice otherwise it's just a hollow word. We have accumulated, we have used, and we see a higher objective, and we relinquish the lesser for the greater. These people we're told are in the front rank, they have reputation they, are someone to look to, the light shines and it's not under a bushel. They have achieved distinction, but then comes the sacrifice.

Someone said, interesting, the even a good teacher finds it difficult to recognize the students who are surprising him. Some out of humility do, they say, ‘well, I have taught you all I can, and now you must move on to someone who can teach you more.’ I always admire that when I see that in a teacher because it shows a really good sense of proportion. Possession or ownership would say, ‘you're my student forever’, even if I'm just going to be a drag upon you and can’t take you further.

There's always a higher teacher and our teacher has been in one sense the mind and the lower personal, self helping to gather everything into integration, but the higher the pairs of opposites is the still-greater teacher, and we have to give up the teaching, the teacher function, to that higher point.

[Every time we change colors we change class, there were at one point seven classes at the same time. There is some repetition but also different insights, and I try to gather together the things different people have said because they often give Important different angles anyway.]

Striving to turn our attention to the love of the real.

A master of the personality, mastering personality expression. I wonder if some of the great actors are not found here, with the fifth petal really glorious and with work in the sixth petal to refine their craft under Virgo. The Leo-Virgo is an excellent combination and then when it comes to transcending the human world altogether we seem sometimes to involve the petal seven, eight, and nine. Which is not to say that you cannot have a brilliant actor that is in those realms, but more study on that is needed.

So we have the lower master and the higher master. The lower master is the personality, the master is the guiding light. By what light should we be guided? People who are not yet personalities, they look to those who are, of course, and those who are personalities look to those who are in a way no longer personalities. How do we exit out of this difficult celebrity petal. It’s hard to stop being a celebrity.

Someone suggesting Bob Dylan had been doing this and was getting more into the sixth petal. The social critic I think comes in strongly in the sixth petal, they see all the things that are wrong with society and of course, based on what's wrong with himself. Some people are famous, the fame the celebrity – but something higher is driving them.

It's the artists who are real aspirants. Johann Sebastian Bach working in the same church just year after year, for every Sunday having to crank out the new music, have a copy, have it rehearsed. One can only imagine the pressure. But of course as my old music teacher used to say, ‘his name was Bach, it means brook, it means stream and it was a whole of the stream of inspiration that flowed through him.’ If one looks at his horoscope it is astonishing. The moon, Venus, Mercury, and Neptune are all at the top of the chart and in Pisces. Cancer rising, talk about the flow of inspiration, ceaseless flow from the buddhic

plane really, and initiate-artist.

Maybe we can tell by the degree to which the art is personal. Maybe not entirely. Maybe it's personal and transpersonal at the same time it's one man. I'm thinking of Shakespeare whatever Shakespeare was he really Shakespeare, was he Bacon, was he an artist a playwright by the name of Edward de Vere? There seems to be some search for the real Shakespeare; I think Derek Jacobi is bringing that on. When you write about humanity in such a vast and encompassing way, it's about many personal things but the view is the view of the soul, that's the view of all of humanity, is the view of what humanity is. These are initiate writers, they see the whole mess of it. So there are artists who are aspirants, artists on the spiritual path, and artists who are initiates. With Leo and the dramatization of the fifth petal, different types of expression can emerge, and we probably know what is a low level of arts, dealing with a strictly human, and what is a higher level talking about eternal things, things that are true for all human beings. Maybe that is in some of the Greek tragedies this was touched, that which is true for all human beings

Well anyway the fifth petalers? … that dramatize the crisis, crises of personality, common themes out there for all to see. We can identify with that image and we all live through these things. They can also set an example, in this petal Leo can really set an example and that's one of the ways Leo serves. Heights of notable service are reached in Aquarius and in Leo and by setting an example Leo serves.

The cause of the causes. If we are enamored of a cause and wish to promote a cause. Sometimes the idealistic sixth petal is coming in. There's so much of the sixth ray there in the sixth petal and strong Neptune, but I'm saying still in the fifth petal this can be done.

In the fifth petal there's a huge power of concentration and Leo in that meditative process equals concentration. I'm trying to find all these different names: lotuses of concentration, lotuses of centralization, many different names for the radiant lotuses who begin to appear here. Based on their strong mental ability (perhaps depending on the ray but it is number five) they can go further and get the touch of higher mind and then even later abstract mind. If there is not fifth petal development then matter will not be able to carry the still higher vibration.

… 3:45:30 People were saying that they recognize this, the more personal, and the lighter side and the darker side. Many crows, the birds of karma, quoth the Raven nevermore … In Leo, Corvus the crow, the messenger of the gods the messenger of a higher self which must often interfere in the life of the personality.

In this petal we become more than the personality. This is one of the major things and we begin to be what? We begin to be something more real. We sense the two in petal four, we try to balance them, but we didn't run towards the higher self, here we recognize the two and we orient, we run and we go towards it. We begin to criticize the lower and become much more like the higher in petal six, so we recognize the two in petal four, we reorient in petal five, and aspire to become it and reach it, and we eliminate the obstacles in petal six, we act very intelligently under Virgo.

We have a lot of dramatic and traumatic things going on here as we strive to be what we really are. Maybe the midlife crisis is the prerogative of people that are working here. In other words, ‘I've worked as a personality but there is something more and higher’. This can be the classic shift between the personality ray and the soul ray. The magnificence of the personality ray can demonstrate but the higher of the pairs of opposites demonstrates a different ray and so there is chaos as these two rays are contending. As we strive to move closer to the higher of the rays. This is familiar in the ray language of

course.

3:38:00 What can we say, some people go along in petal three and even petal four and have no revolution, because revolution is based on duality. But then something in me says, ‘* cannot stand what I'm doing.’ Some higher part of myself is looking on at what I am doing, ‘I'm acting simply as a limited being,’ and there's something beyond this limitation within myself and when that greater incentive is seen then a crisis can arise. There are crises from doing the right and crisis from doing wrong.

I'd rather have the crisis from doing right. In other words, strive for the higher you will most certainly have a crisis. Perfection calls imperfection to the surface when we see something more perfect and we begin to achieve it then the imperfection arises they both will have the outer effects. Doing the wrong will have undesirable effects and doing the right will have effects, not necessarily undesirable but difficult.

So we have crises of personality found here, and crises of the soul expressed in the personality. There's a lot of turbulence before that first and initiation can be taken. Vulcan in Pluto do their thing and stir everything up.

Master DK was one who said, ‘What if you're not having a crisis? Why are you not having a crisis? Why not have a crisis? Make your own crisis.’ Because it means you're pushing forward, and the resistance of all that is inert and wants to hold you in a particular location of limitation will be aroused, and that will cause the crisis. You will be attached to that from which you have not entirely freed yourself and tremendously attracted to that to which you will attach yourself. Attachment to the higher and relinquishment of the lower is possible.

But when you look around, how many people do you know that are going in this going through this petal five process? Leo, the most human of all the signs, Leo and Scorpio. Think of it, the two signs most related to humanity in Scorpio and Leo. Scorpio ruling the fifth creative hierarchy, hierarchy of human monads and Leo the most human of all, and here they are brought together in the same petal where we're told is going to be a battle, because Scorpio is going to stage the release of Leo, and Pluto is going to cut the thread which keeps the consciousness down in the lower personal self.

We really have to change the sense of who we are and if we think we are the personality we are gravely, gravely mistaken. Every day we should remind ourselves that we are not that and we are something else. Roberto Assagioli essentially said, if the disidentification exercise, it's a daily prophylaxis, it's a protection against glamour and illusion, to remind ourselves that the familiar self, the neighboring self, the self we think we are is not the self we are at all.

Then the divine discontent arises because the spirit, the monad, an extension is immersed in all this and knows its own true highest state and cannot stand being limited by self objectification as the lower ego that which we think that our real Self may be, and it's not.

So the rebellion is against being limited by lesser versions of the self. In fact the self is immense, but it tends to identify itself with lesser things in the progression of evolution. And every time we have to disidentify we are in for a struggle because the familiar ties we have to develop with what we thought we were call to us and they have developed a degree of comfort with the kind of old shoe effect. Would you rather get into a rigid new shoe and have to break it in, work it out, or have a nice comfortable slipper that you're used to? There are many forms of comfort which have to be broken, and the inner

types of comfort are the hardest to break after all.

So you look around, aspirants and disciples today, they fight to express themselves, they fight to be a higher self, they fight to balance these two selves, they fight to relinquish the lower self, they strive for high things, and still are limited by ahamkara. It's all operating in this stage of fifth development and unfoldment. And that just takes you to the first degree.

What battles lie on ahead after that? Significant battles, major, major battles which are even more dire than the ones you have to go through when you're simply learning to integrate on a higher turn of the spiral, not just the personality but soul and personality, the beginning of that process. But we have to entirely recondition the personality and be able to be in the consciousness which pertains to the soul.

The petals on ahead take a shorter time to work through and maybe in one life all the sacrifice petals will unfold, not all of the same degree, because some are already I think reasonably unfolded. But in one life they'll all unfold together into completeness.

The climaxing can come very fast if the preparation has been adequate. We people who study these things we're at that point where we're interested in treading the path of initiation and we've gone through the personal phase, although the vestiges of personality still haunt us and still impede. We still have much correcting work to do, the corrector of the form of the probationary path, even a number of lives to spend on the path of initiation. Who knows how many lives? The archetype will symbology there is 30, 33 lives, something like that, but of course it could be done in a much shorter time.

3:55:00 I've made it here to the fifth petal [laughing] before the group is coming home from Tibet. So this is the end of egoic lotus webinar program 41, and it's the synthesis for petal five part two, and it will be I think four hours. … We'll have the beginning of egoic lotus webinar commentary program 42 and synthesis for petal six. How many hours? I don't know, but they've been running about five or six hours.

It's interesting in that section that talked about the star breaking out of the buddhic plane and signaling initiation, this star signals the first initiation, and then four petals remain to be opened. It's really the progress now, from the first to the third degree that we are talking about. When the head centers become seven instead of five, and when the monad to starts to come into view, and with all this precise work which is abnormal and it's strenuous, it's a forcing process, and the supplementation, the uplifting power of the rod of initiation, it's really entering the forcing process in this last number of lives. It’s been a long haul, it's taken people more than 21 million years to get there, most of them some of gone faster the Christ went much faster. But people who are on the doorway of initiation, most of them are coming from the moon chain where millions of years were spent bringing them to a certain point of development, and in the previous solar system and who knows how long was spent at that time when the human being was individualized in that long pralaya –it’s taken a long time to get here.

The last work that's done in these petals related to initiation is so brief by comparison, and yet it is very arduous and this is precisely the phase in which so many of us find ourselves; entering these last few lives, whether it's 30 or 15, whatever. It will be interesting one day will study and see who took longer who took a shorter time and why. It's the why that counts because then you can help other people understand how they can facilitate their progress when you work with them in the psychological sense.

So we have covered these five major petals which give us a kind of Brahmic confirmation, a five pointed star at the first initiation.

Now our next study will be on the path of initiation, but of course we have to study petal six which has a lot to do – because they are still active before the first initiation. It's a probationary path petal and when it fully unfolds it will seem to indicate the second initiation, but all of the correctives we have to learn to apply. It's one thing to say, ‘well this is how I am’, which is an invitation to continue glamor and another thing to say, ‘this is what I must correct’. We will get into that process of Virgo and the necessity for self correction.

That's it. I think we have reached the point where we can move on, and when I can I will return to petal six. There is quite a bit more to do: petal six, seven, eight, nine, and then some work on the synthesis petals and then the viewing of the big charts, which maybe won't take that long but we view everything side by side and we see all these different factors arranged. Thank you B.L., in a nice orderly manner.

Then it's just left for us to learn all this stuff and to apply the information in the assessment of our own developmental process and in the developmental process of others, is not just looking at their horoscope. This is the beginning of the horoscope of the soul, where we actually see the area in which people are working for some time. Horoscopes for the personality change rapidly. What is the focus of the soul for some several lives? Maybe we can come to understand that.

Okay, friends. That'll be it for the moment and we'll be seeing you all the best. Listen, look, study, patiently endure, let it all sweep through you, the good and the bad and hopefully, most hopefully mostly good and become steeped in this material until it becomes so much a part of you that you really know it.

See you later.